Ed Gorman - Short Stories, Volume 1

On the way to Bud Garrett’s room they passed an especially good-looking nurse. Parnell felt guilty about recognizing her beauty. His old friend was dying just down the hall and here Parnell was worrying about some nurse.

Parnell went around the corner of the door. The room was dark. It smelled sweet from flowers and fetid from flesh literally rotting.

Then he looked at the frail yellow man in the bed. Even in the shadows you could see his skin was yellow.

“I’ll be damned,” the man said.

It was like watching a skeleton talk by some trick of magic.

Parnell went over and tried to smile his ass off but all he could muster was just a little one. He wanted to cry until he collapsed. You sonofabitch, Parnell thought, enraged. He just wasn’t sure who he was enraged with. Death or God or himself — or maybe even Bud himself for reminding Parnell of just how terrible and scary it could get near the end.

“I’ll be damned,” Bud Garrett said again.

He put out his hand and Parnell took it. Held it for a long time.

“He’s a good boy, isn’t he?” Garrett said, nodding to Richard.

“He sure is.”

“I had to raise him after his mother died. I did a good job, if I say so myself.”

“A damn good job, Bud.”

This was a big private room that more resembled a hotel suite. There was a divan and a console TV and a dry bar. There was a Picasso lithograph and a walk-in closet and a deck to walk out on. There was a double-sized water bed with enough controls to drive a space ship and a big stereo and a bookcase filled with hardcovers. Most people Parnell knew dreamed of living in such a place. Bud Garrett was dying in it.

“He told you,” Garrett said.

“What?” Parnell spun around to face Richard, knowing suddenly the worst truth of all.

“He told you.”

“Jesus, Bud, you sent him, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

Parnell looked at Garrett again. How could somebody who used to have a weight problem and who could throw around the toughest drunk the barrio ever produced get to be like this. Nearly every time he talked he winced. And all the time he smelled. Bad.

“I sent for you because none of us is perfect,” Bud said.

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s afraid.”

“Richard?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t blame him. I’d be afraid, too.” Parnell paused and stared at Bud. “You asked him to kill you, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It’s his responsibility to do it.”

Richard stepped up to his father’s bedside and said, “I agree with that, Mr. Parnell. It is my responsibility. I just need a little help is all.”

“Doing what?”

“If I buy cyanide, it will eventually be traced to me and I’ll be tried for murder. If you buy it, nobody will ever connect you with my father.”

Parnell shook his head. “That’s bullshit. That isn’t what you want me for. There are a million ways you could get cyanide without having it traced back.”

Bud Garrett said, “I told him about you. I told him you could help give him strength.”

“I don’t agree with any of this, Bud. You should die when it’s your time to die. I’m a Catholic.”

Bud laughed hoarsely. “So am I, you asshole.” He coughed and said, “The pain’s bad. I’m beyond any help they can give me. But it could go on for a long time.” Then, just as his son had an hour ago, Bud Garrett began crying almost imperceptibly. “I’m scared, Parnell. I don’t know what’s on the other side but it can’t be any worse than this.” He reached out his hand and for a long time Parnell just stared at it but then he touched it.

“Jesus,” Parnell said. “It’s pretty fucking confusing, Bud. It’s pretty fucking confusing.”

Richard took Parnell out to dinner that night. It was a nice place. The table cloths were starchy white and the waiters all wore shiny shoes. Candles glowed inside red glass.

They’d had four drinks apiece, during which Richard told Parnell about his two sons (six and eight respectively) and about the perils and rewards of the rent-a-car business and about how much he liked windsurfing even though he really wasn’t much good at it.

Just after the arrival of the fourth drink, Richard took something from his pocket and laid it on the table.

It was a cold capsule.

“You know how the Tylenol Killer in Chicago operated?” Richard asked.

Parnell nodded.

“Same thing,” Richard said. “I took the cyanide and put it in a capsule.”

“Christ. I don’t know about it.”

“You’re scared, too, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.”

Richard sipped his whiskey-and-soda. With his regimental striped tie he might have been sitting in a country club. “May I ask you something?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Sure.”

“Then if you believe in God, you must believe in goodness, correct?”

Parnell frowned. “I’m not much of an intellectual, Richard.”

“But if you believe in God, you must believe in goodness, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you think what’s happening to my father is good?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Then you must also believe that God isn’t doing this to him — right?”

“Right.”

Richard held up the capsule. Stared at it. “All I want you to do is give me a ride to the hospital. Then just wait in the car down in the parking lot.”

“I won’t do it.”

Richard signaled for another round.

“I won’t goddamn do it,” Parnell said.

By the time they left the restaurant Richard was too drunk to drive. Parnell got behind the wheel of the new Audi. “Why don’t you tell me where you live? I’ll take you home and take a cab from there.”

“I want to go to the hospital.”

“No way, Richard.”

Richard slammed his fist against the dashboard. “You fucking owe him that, man!” he screamed.

Parnell was shocked, and a bit impressed, with Richard’s violent side. If nothing else, he saw how much Richard loved his old man.

“Richard, listen.”

Richard sat in a heap against the opposite door. His tears were dry ones, choking ones. “Don’t give me any of your speeches.” He wiped snot from his nose on his sleeve. “My dad always told me what a tough guy Parnell was.” He turned to Parnell, anger in him again. “Well, I’m not tough, Parnell, and so I need to borrow some of your toughness so I can get that man out of his pain and grant him his one last fucking wish. DO YOU GODDAMN UNDERSTAND ME?”

He smashed his fist on the dashboard again.

Parnell turned on the ignition and drove them away.

When they reached the hospital, Parnell found a parking spot and pulled in. The mercury vapor lights made him feel as though he were on Mars. Bugs smashed against the windshield.

“I’ll wait here for you,” Parnell said.

Richard looked over at him. “You won’t call the cops?”

“No.”

“And you won’t come up and try to stop me?”

“No.”

Richard studied Parnell’s face. ‘Why did you change your mind?”

“Because I’m like him.”

“Like my father?”

“Yeah. A coward. I wouldn’t want the pain, either. I’d be just as afraid.”

All Richard said, and this he barely whispered, was “Thanks.”

While he sat there Parnell listened to country western music and then a serious political call-in show and then a call-in show where a lady talked about Venusians who wanted to pork her and then some salsa music and then a religious minister who sounded like Foghorn Leghorn in the old Warner Brothers cartoons.

By then Richard came back.

He got in the car and slammed the door shut and said, completely sober now, “Let’s go.”