Lewis

It was Mama’s illness that brought me back east. Mama’s illness and sister’s craziness that disrupted my 22-month streak of success. I’d still be in diapers if we measured success like we do the growth of babies and toddlers - or in training pants at least. My birthday present for my 31st year was an early morning phone call that pulled me reluctantly from a vivid dream that involved wolves and moonscapes and a lone owl in a desolate, charred tree. I was on a high ridge of smooth, white, circular-pocked stone. Along the edge popped up the head of a massive gray wolf with sapphire-yellow eyes and silver mane. He stared at me, then hopped up and started trotting to the east, silhouetted in the low glow of a crescent moon, followed by one, two, three - I counted nine wolves when a shriek pierced the night. I glanced to the west, and there was that owl in that leafless tree, a barn owl with no barn in sight. Eyes fixed on me, not thirty feet away. It swiveled its head toward the lupus, then back to me, then let out another piercing shriek before silently spreading its wings and launching into the night. In the dream, the owl was as big as the wolves, the night a silvery-blue studded with stars, the air warm and pleasant against my skin - like a soothing, loving hand. I watched the owl circle around the edge of the ridge, when my nerves jarred with yet another shriek and the entire scene dissolved like water poured on a chalk painting. I bolted upright in bed, and the shrill came again.

My phone was blowing up, gyrating and vibrating insistently. The clock on my repurposed dining tray-cum-nightstand read 4:44. What the heck? I grabbed it and flipped it open (yes, please don’t judge). I didn’t recognize the number, but noted 5 missed calls.

“Hello?” The moonscape was still lingering in my mind’s eye.

“It’s Mama, Lewis. You need to come.”

“Sadie?”

“Yes, Lewis. It’s Sadie. She’s bad off. They just hauled her to the hospital in the ambulance.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, Lewis. Just come.” And she clicked off. It was the quietest I’d ever heard her.

*****

I groaned at the prospect of going home, glanced around my little studio apartment. It was in a 19th century warehouse that would dapple with the sun’s reflection off Puget Sound. When there was sun. Refinished plank floors and ceiling, one brick wall, plaster on the others. A bathroom as big as a coffin and a kitchenette in one corner comprised of a miniature fridge, a table with folding legs, a microwave and a two-burner hot plate. I’d found an old wooden screen someone had fashioned out of louvered closet doors and folded it around the kitchenette, partitioning my no-platform bed from the view. One tired loveseat in a lovely gold brocade, a miniature flatscreen balanced on a hard-sided suitcase, and a wardrobe without doors rounded out my humble home. I really liked it.

I heard a small snuffling at the window closest to my bed (which was right against the wall) and saw Sam peeking in at me. Ahh, Sam. What am I to do with you? He was on the fire escape platform, three floors up from the alley. He showed up one day looking rather worse for his life experiences - a tattered ear, one eye puffed up almost closed, some formidable looking goo accumulating around it. If his coat hadn’t been so long his ribs would’ve showed, but he looked to be a cross between a Himalayan and a bobcat. And not a very resourceful bobcat, either, by the way he appeared to be starving. You’d think with all the fish about the docks he would have fared better, but apparently not. He was peculiar with that short tail, dull, scraggly coat, eyes a cloudy mint green. I’d been in the apartment all of two weeks when he popped up one evening on my fire escape. Eating my General Tso’s chicken that I’d set out there (pre-refrigerator) to keep cool. It was to be my breakfast, but I guess he needed it more than I.

That was just over a year ago. Now he patted the pane of glass and looked at me, eyes as clear and bright as the queen’s emeralds, coat fluffy and shiny and silvery like he’d just stepped out of Desmond’s Hair Studio, paws and ears in smoky stockings and earmuffs. He turned out to be a rather handsome creature, and for some reason rather attached to me. I slid closer to the window and unlatched it, cracking it just enough for him to enter. He slipped in with that graceful fluidity cats possess, then sat down on the window ledge (it is rather wide) and looked at me. Behind him, across the alley, the blank, brick wall gave an impressive background, and the night pitched even darker in the hour preceding dawn.

“I have to go to Florida,” I said.

His eyes narrowed slightly, as though acknowledging my comment, and a deep purr emitted from his chest.

“How ‘bout I ask Renee down the hall to feed you?”

Again that deep purr, and the narrowing of the eyes.

“I know your favorite is salmon.” He got up then, stepped over onto the bed and pressed his body against mine in that way cats do when they’re rubbing their scent all over you.

*****

Florida in March can be hot or cold, wet or dry, pleasant or unpleasant. Mama lived in the panhandle, in an area where the South couldn’t get any deeper. That morning of my birthday when Sadie called, I had sat for a while contemplating my moonscape, wolves and owl, before finally rising and heating up some water for a cup of instant java. I know, strange brew for one in the middle of coffee country, but really, I was doing well to keep the rent paid, lights on and my savings account growing. It had taken ten years, a few good-but-crappy girlfriends, and a lot of odd jobs to realize I wasn’t getting any younger. At three decades, I had nothing to show but ten thousand in debt, a student loan from an online college subsequently indicted for fraud, an old Ford pickup (older than me) with a few rusted holes in the bed but a heater that worked, and a driver’s license. I am really proud of my driver’s license. I am really proud of my savings account. But it really took a hit on this plane ticket.

I flew into Atlanta and rented a car, all in the interest of economy. Headed out in the wrong direction and found myself staring at the ridge in my dream. Stone Mountain loomed to my left, and even though my mother lay in a deep, induced sleep, I found myself taking the off-ramp and donating $20 to enter the park. I had, of course, known of this place throughout my youth. It was a ritual destination for camping trips among many of the high schoolers. I never went, as I was usually too busy working to pay bills, bail out Sadie, or help grandmother with groceries (which is code for spending hot afternoons tending the garden, slopping hogs, or range riding through thick pine forests and swamplands hunting for errant cattle.)

I followed the signs in the park, catching glimpses through trees of this incredible, round rock rising from the surrounding hills. It is a strange sight, and looked to me like a gigantic meteorite half-plunged into the earth’s crust. It was late afternoon when I parked at the sky lift - a cable car that runs to the top, and there a reception area proferrs information about the anomaly and coffee and popcorn awaits. I bought a ticket and rode up, where one can walk out on the white, pocked stone and be stunned with marvelous views. On this day, however, the clouds were low and lowering by the minute, and by the time I arrived at the summit, it was immersed in a thick, gray fog and bone-chilling temps. There were very few visitors, and when I ventured out onto the wet granite with its circular pockmarks, it was as though I had stepped back into my dream.

I didn’t go to the edge - it was too chilly, too damp and too eerie in the drizzling mist. About halfway out on the rock I stood in the haze and thought any moment the wolves or the owl or the moon would appear, but the only thing that emerged was a Korean lady in a London Fog raincoat carrying an open umbrella painted like a giant sunflower. I stayed for a whole of ten minutes, then wandered back into the reception area, sprung for a Starbuck’s coffee I never drank at home, and awaited the cable car’s descent.

*****

I drove South in silence, thoughts everywhere except on my reason for being here, as my chest would tighten and breath quicken whenever I thought of Mama. I thought of the rental car - there is something to be said for a Toyota’s ride, though if my old Ford were the only measure, any vehicle would ride better than that, even a covered wagon. Not to dis’ my Ford, I bought the thing - or rather was paid with the thing - when working for a mechanic’s shop in a small, dusty town in west Texas. I ended up there with girlfriend #3, or #4. I’m not sure, as they were hazy times. I am not proud of this, but blame it on youthful indiscretion that involves work, drink and smoke, and always the next adventure. It wasn’t particularly my lifestyle, but it was hers, so there I was. We had been together a couple of years (I was even contemplating marriage) when she said we were moving to Texas. Something to do with a promotion and if I loved her…. At the time, we’d been living in Shreveport, and I’d been mechanic-ing for a marine shop and doing fairly well. (I’d ended up in Shreveport with girlfriend #2 or #3. Before that, Orange Beach with my first girlfriend... there is a pattern here). At any rate, I learned not long after arriving in Texas it wasn’t a managerial position she’d taken, but a position with the district manager that involved regular meetings at a Garden Inn in Amarillo. The only thing I can say about that is it wasn’t sustainable.

I’m not one to throwing fits. Sister Sadie had that wrapped up. The family always said she’d began with typical toddler tantrums and never grew out of them. It was just her nature. My grandmother’s house still had china in it, but my mother’s house did not, and by the time I remember eating around the table we were a family of Dixie cups and plates, as everything else had been shattered over the years. I was the youngest, and I still have vague memories of my oldest brother Joey catching Sadie up in a bear hug in the middle of one of her tornadoes and holding her tight, back against a wall, until the wind finally blew out of her. Often, to my young self, it felt as though the roof might come off any moment as the whole house shook with her wailing. Mama would disappear out the front door, and sometimes in the early morning hours I would hear her slip in quietly and pad softly to her room and close the door.

Given the destructive forces of Sister, I was prone to quiet and never really grew out of it. I am also not an emotional reactionary. So upon my accidental discovery of my girlfriend’s other life - I had been in Amarillo on a parts pick-up mission, sitting at a red light, when I saw her alight from His Beamer with a smile brighter than the Texas sun - I went on to the auto parts yard while my thoughts turned slowly this new information.

For the next few weeks it was business as usual, excepting the lug nuts I stripped off a Mercedes, the Toyota I oil-changed with transmission fluid, and the ancient compressor I blew up in the backyard of the shop, which was a real shame, ’cause they don’t make’m like that anymore. I was lost in thought when the thing started chugging like an overloaded freight train headed up hill, an eerie, metallic moan came from somewhere deep within, and I looked over in time to access the situation before diving behind some 50-gallon barrels as the thing blew with all the effect of a 40-pound bomb.

As the dust settled and the ringing in my ears began to abate, I heard my boss yelling, “Lewis! Lewis! You okay?” I was dazed, but the rear yard was decimated (looked like Sadie’d been there). Thankfully, no one was injured, aside from my hearing which rang for weeks and a few grazes on head and elbows from my dive in the dirt.

For a week or two after, my lovely girlfriend poured concern over me like corn syrup on a biscuit, then was called on another ‘business trip’ to Amarillo. I happen to prefer butter on my biscuits, which thought was on my mind as I packed up my clothes, a few books and some toiletries, slung them in the trusty, rusty, old Ford, and followed the sun West.

*****

My oldest brother Joey was standing out to the side of the hospital, where smoke from his cigarette wouldn’t bother any sensitive folks going in and out the front door. It was late evening, and he didn’t see me arrive. I parked where I could watch him a moment. Evidently his phone rang, as he pulled it from his pocket and listened for a few minutes, then plopped it back into his jacket.

Joey is tall, 6’2 or so, dark-haired, blue-eyed. Eons ago he’d been the star quarterback of our high school team, followed by a phenomenal record as running back for a Gainesville university. Lots of folk thought he would go pro, but after two years of college, he abruptly joined the Coast Guard. He spent six years Guarding the Coast from the Gulf to the Atlantic to the Pacific before moving back to the river sticks. Family, and a lovely woman, brought him home, and he spends his days farming and ranching and county commissioning. Yes, he is that guy everyone loves. He is probably why Sadie never went to prison, though she has spent lots of time in and out of the county jail for a myriad of things - primarily drug possession or destruction of property or FTAs. Once, she spent 11/29 for shooting up the local tavern. While she was locked up, Mama would carry her homemade suppers, as would several other family members. I don’t think she ever ate the food they had in jail. I also don’t know how she got out of a prison term for that one, except times were a little different back then, everyone loved Mama - including the sheriff, the prosecutor and the judge - and there was some story about how Sadie only dropped the pistol and it went off on its own. Eight times.

In defense of the powers that be, she was advised were she ever found in possession of a firearm again, she’d be sent to state for a very long while. Of all the things she’s never listened to, she seems to have listened to that.

After a while, I got out of the car and walked toward Joey. He saw me when I was halfway across the parking lot and broke into a big grin, spread his arms wide. I found myself trotting toward him and letting him sweep me up in a bear hug. I felt his lips press my forehead, then his hand rested on the crown of my head and he held me tight. I surprised myself by choking up. After a few moments he stepped back and sized me up.

“So good to see you, Louie.” He always called me Louie.

“You, too, Josephus. You, too.”

“Only you can call me that, you know.”

I smiled, “I know.” Then, tightly, “How’s Mama?”

Joey looked away from me for a moment, said, “Not good. Britt’s inside with her now.” Britt is Joey’s wife of twenty years. “They’re going to wake her up in the morning. You staying at Mama’s, or with us?”

“I got a room on the beach, not far from here.”

“Why don’t you stay at the condo? There’s plenty of room.”

“Thanks, I’d rather not. Solitude is my friend.” I broke into a grin with that.

“I know, Louie. I know.” And he pulled me in a sideways hug and patted my back lovingly.

*****

God Forgive me, but I drank through the funeral. I drank through the wake. I drank through the memorial service the community held - the Governor was there - and the dozens of gatherings Joey dragged me to. I started with bourbon right after Mama passed, but Joey pulled me outside, reached in a cooler in the bed of his truck, pressed a bottle of vodka in my hands. “They won’t be able to smell this so much, Louie. Don’t make yourself sick.”

I leaned against the side of his truck, head bowed, soul weary. “I’m already sick,” I said.

“Yes, Louie. We’re all a bit sick.”

*****

I went to the hospital the night before they brought her home. My first night there, after Joey had fortified me with his eternal grace, I slipped quietly into the room to see Mama lying in that bed, ventilator huffing, IVs pumping, monitors blinking. Anybody who’s ever visited an ICU knows how surreal it is to see someone in that state. It’s a thousand times worse when it‘s Mama.

Outside the ICU, Sadie had made her full presence known, blamed me for Mama’s being ill. “IF YOU’D JUST COME HOME G-DDAMMIT!!” She was so fierce, and her tenor so high, I was surprised she didn‘t pull everyone in ICU out of their comas. I stood there, shocked at her outburst, at the change in her appearance from stunning to terrifying. It was like watching a beautiful creature become rabid, as a lupus morphing into a werewolf, or an owl into a harpy. My second oldest brother, Seymour - a LEO - snatched her up and dragged her outside, and we could hear her howling reverberating down the hallways, disrupting the entire institution. It’s possible Seymour became a LEO because of Sadie, but whatever the reason, he had no difficulty getting her outside. And it was almost though everyone still accepted this as normal.

My other sister, Nicky, abruptly hugged me up, whispered how much they all missed me and never mind Sadie and hoped I was finding happiness “Out West.” I gave her a peck on the cheek, said I was well. She is a lovely woman, calm and mild-mannered and sensible. My other two brothers, Charles and Jimmy, had driven back to the country. There was still livestock to tend, an endless line of prayer warriors to receive and more than likely a few nips of ’shine to take the edge off everything. They were both solid souls, like the rest of our family, excepting me and Sadie. Actually, we all probably had a tinge of crazy; Sadie just got a massive dosing of it, and I tried to shake mine off when God was handing it out, but some stuck. More than I wanted. I slipped into the ICU with Joey following.

We stood there, her first and her last. Mothers aren’t supposed to have favorites, and I imagine ours didn’t, but she did. In our family there were always plenty of close relatives and pretty much no way anyone got by with anything without someone knowing. And everyone was a favorite of someone. But they always said I was Mama’s favorite. They also said this was something of an irritation to Sadie. But I didn’t understand it. Still don’t.

My mother was a beautiful woman. Even linked to all this artifice, there was a glow beneath her skin like gold under water. She was tough, like country living will make a woman, and kind, like birthing babies and tending children does a woman, and fierce, like a lioness protecting her cubs or taking down an eland for supper. When my stepfather died, she had all manner of suitors from all over the south trying to come see her. Grass hadn’t even sprung up yet on Papa’s grave, and for months I’d come home from work to find assorted tokens of affection, including agglomerations of plants and flowers smothering the front porch, an ironwork cage with lovebirds in it, a pair of miniature cattle haltered to the front fence.

Once, there was a flock of Chinese chickens left loose in the front yard, strutting around like a little feathered gang. Another time, a Luistano stallion, gifted from a man from New Orleans. It fairly broke apart the barn, tore through the paddock fences and then had a thunderous row with Joey’s stallion before Joey caught it and trailered it off. He is the family horse whisperer. On top of all that, an old admirer from Alabama who owned a bunch of car dealerships kept sending her a new vehicle every week. I made more trips returning those cars that summer I felt like an Enterprise driver. Of all the gifts, the only one she didn’t return was the filly that arrived the following year from mother’s mare. Mama named her Frances, after Papa. That horse still adorns the front pasture to this day, an extraordinary testament to equine beauty, a pale dapple silver with cobalt mane and tail. She looks like a ghost of all things wondrous.

*****

It’s a strange thing when people die. I’m not sure how it works, but some people can be comatose, or delirious, or heavily-medicated, and everyone about them is saying “any day, now,” or “any hour,” or “she won’t make it to the morning.” But she does. For a week, Mama clung to life in the hospital after being taken off life-support. Nothing was right when they put her on life-support: erratic heart, sporadic breathing, organs kicking on and off. The doctors didn’t know what was going on, except that there was blood on her brain from where she’d fallen and hit her head. Because Mama always said she’d never want life-support, we agreed to take her off and see what happened. Nothing happened. She kept breathing. Heart kept beating. It was like she was Sleeping Beauty.

The night before we brought her home, I slipped into her room, when the rest of the family was sleeping, or drinking, or preparing for her coming home. We were all so wrecked, a quiet, subdued energy pulsed around us. No one could comprehend how one so full of life could become so still. There was no machinery around her: now she lived of her own accord. I sat by the window, watching the night glow, the moon rise, silhouetted trees move every so often in a breeze. A movement caught my eye alongside the empty parking lot, and for a moment thought I saw a wolf trotting along the sidewalk. But then it was gone, and just after a quiet, familiar voice said, “Lewis.”

I turned, and Mama was looking at me. I teared up, moved close to her bed, took her hand. “Mama.” It was barely a whisper, my throat tight, heart paused.

She looked at me through half-lidded eyes, the pale green of her iris’ glinting in the moonlight. “Hi, love.” She smiled slightly, but it all seemed an effort.

“Rest, Mama. Save your energy. We’re bringing you home tomorrow.”

Again, slight smile.

“Everybody’s here, Mama. Waiting for you to get well.”

Her eyes caught mine and she barely whispered, “That’s not how it goes, Lewis.” She gripped my hand a little tighter, a grip like a four-year-old’s. “But you’re here. And that’s all that’s important.”

She’s dying, and I’m here is all that’s important?

We brought her home, and for days after the house was coming and going, clusters of family in the kitchen, spilling into the dining room, living room, den. Grandchildren slammed in and out of the back porch door, slipped in and out around hips and legs, subdued, then laughing like today is all there is. Food spilled over tables and countertops, brought from all over the panhandle, and a few states, too. I’d been home for a week, and was hoping Sam was okay. There I went again: Mama’s got hospice and I’m worried about a cat.

She’d slipped back to sleep the night I sat with her, and stayed that way for days, when that thing happened where someone comes to and has all this energy like nothing was wrong. She talked, then, endlessly, to her children, her sisters, her mother. Everyone thought she was on the mend, the crisis was over.

Then she went to sleep and never woke up.

It’s a cruel thing when death teases you like that, and we all were shocked again at the reality. Sadie handled it by taking off in Mama’s truck and driving it down the power lines and off the cliff into the river. Jesus Christ, as if everyone didn’t have enough to weigh them down, they had to go fish her out of the river and stick her in a hospital where they could pick her brains some more.

I rode with Joey out to the power lines, and stood on the cliff surrounded by woods and water and high-tension wire. Emergency lights flashed in the night, powerful spotlights illuminated the scene, and the only two things anyone could think to be grateful about were that it wasn’t raining anymore, and Sadie survived the forty foot plummet, even if the truck didn’t. Oh - and Mama didn’t have to know.

We watched as the firemen retrieved her from the cold water, strapped her limp body in a basket, winched her up the steep riverbank. A dozen men dotted the sloping cliff to keep the basket from bumping and banging as they brought her up, then she was whisked - basket and all - into the ambulance and off to the hospital. There was quite a crowd out there - deputies and fire chiefs and county commissioners - by the time they got her out. The truck was left ’til morning, and slowly red lights stopped flashing and spotlights popped off and vehicles started leaving.

Joey turned to me, eyes pained even in the dim light. “I have to go to the hospital.”

I was sitting on a rock near the cliff edge, hands in pocket, numb from cold. “I know.”

“You ready to go?”

I sat quietly for a minute, then pulled the flask from my pocket, took a swig. “No. Would you send someone for me?”

He looked at me, night brightening with the breaking clouds, moon drifting in and out. “Yes.”

He headed toward his truck, then said, over his shoulder, “Please don’t trip on a rock and end up in the river.”

*****

Sam was waiting on the fire escape when I arrived home. I drove the rental back, ended up paying more than a flight home. But I needed the miles to unravel my thoughts, my memories.

An owl appeared by the river that night; I heard it before I saw it. Perched on a pine branch jutting high above the river - pale, heart-shaped, moonlit face, eyes like obsidian glittering with starlight off the water. It stared at me and I stared at it, then I broke down in tears and sobbed.

Nicky drove Grandmother out to the power lines to pick me up. Beautiful, sensible Nicky, barely able to drive through her tears; Grandmother bolt upright and not an emotion on her noble face. After a moment, Grandmother opened her door and stepped out, picked her way over to the rock and quietly sat beside me, shoulder touching mine.

We sat like that for what seemed an eternity, my grandmother of the unbroken china and her youngest grandchild of the broken heart. Then she said, “Some people just aren’t of this world, my Lewis. Some fight every cell of their being from before they’re born. They are from yubahi - a place between water and air. Some people turn left on the spirit road, when everyone else is turning right. Sadie is from yubahi, and people here will never understand her.”

“Did Mama turn left, Grandmother?”

She was quiet for a moment. “No. She turned neither left nor right. She made her own path, like you.”

Then she rose, placed a kiss on my forehead, and told me to come home.