Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

The answering machine was beeping. Roy let it beep while he put the wine in the icebox, turned on the oven for the fries, went out back and scraped the grill, rubbing it after with butter, a trick he’d learned from his mother. Then, putting the steaks on a plate and pouring on the Creole sauce, one whole bottle, he reached over and hit the playback button.

“Message for Mr. Hill. This is Mrs. Searle, social services up at Ocoee Regional. We’ve got your father in here quite sick, Mr. Hill, maybe not expected to last the night, according to the chief resident, and your name is on the next of kin form. Our number here is-”

She gave the number up in Tennessee. Roy called. Mrs. Searle repeated what she’d said.

“What’s wrong with him?” Roy said.

“I believe it’s his liver, sir.”

Roy believed it too. He called Marcia, postponed dinner.

“What’s wrong, Roy?”

“Something’s come up.” He didn’t want to get into it, not with the way things were starting to go between them-maybe better than ever, that was his secret thought-and not with the weird scene his father had pulled the only time he and Marcia had met.

“Too bad,” Marcia said.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “Maybe we could-”

“Oops, I’ve got a beep,” Marcia said. “Bye, Roy.”

He put the steaks in the fridge, turned off the oven, got back in the car.

Roy drove north on 75.

It just seems like I’m taking all the risks and getting none of the rewards.

Believe me, Jerry, I’ll do everything I can to make sure your efforts are appreciated. How would you like a special mention in next month’s newsletter?

Jerry said something neutral but Roy could tell from his tone that he was starting to come around. The narrator came on and made some important points about managing, but Roy didn’t catch them all because he was wondering about that next of kin thing. He and his father hadn’t seen each other or spoken in ten years, and there was an even longer gap the time before, their relationship being mostly gaps. Maybe his father had simply written his name because it was the correct answer, him never remarrying, so far as Roy knew, and Roy being the only child. Otherwise-what? Some kind of deep-rooted guilt rising up in a dying man? Roy had seen things like that on TV but didn’t know if they happened in real life.

He took the 411 exit, crossed the state line an hour later. Jerry caved in on the activity reports. Carol got him mentioned in the newsletter, page one. Jerry thanked her for everything she’d taught him. The narrator summarized what that was. There were seven points in all, subpoints really, since this all appeared to be part of the second step of the five-step program, but the narrator was still discussing the third subpoint-how to enlist the help of your biggest opponent-when Roy pulled into the visitors lot at Ocoee Regional.

“Patient’s name?”

“Hill.”

“That would be three twenty-seven. You can go on up.”

“I can?”

Roy went up, walked along a wide hall, all harsh blue from the fluorescent strips overhead. Doors were open on both sides. Roy didn’t like what he saw: a man reading from a Bible to a bald kid, an old toothless woman with her mouth wide open, a man with something hard to describe covering half his face. Roy began having problems with his air supply, felt in his pocket, wrapped his hand around the inhaler, held on.

The door to room three twenty-seven was closed. A transparent plastic bag full of dirty linen lay on the floor outside. Roy could see blood on the rolled-up sheets, lots of it. He glanced up and down the hall, looking for someone to ask a question he hadn’t quite formulated, but there was no one. He turned the handle, pushed the door open.

A room for two, but an old shirtless guy had it to himself. The old shirtless guy had little stick arms, a hollow chest, a hard potbelly, a few long strands of rust-colored hair crisscrossing his bald head. He was spooning Jell-O into his mouth and watching Roy with pissed-off eyes. Pissed-off eyes: that was the giveaway.

“You don’t look like you’re dying,” Roy said. That just came out. Sounded pretty bad, but he didn’t wish for it back.

“I’m a fucking medical miracle is what they say.” A blob of Jell-O-the green kind-quivered on his lower lip and dropped to the bedding. “Maybe if your ma had learned you some manners you’d know enough to hide your disappointment a touch better.”

The deep-rooted guilt thing was out.

Roy’s father finished his Jell-O. “Seeing as how you’re here anyways,” he said, “maybe you could be runnin’ one or two little errands for me.”

“Like what?”

“I could use a few things from out at the place.”

“Where’s that?”

“My place? That what you’re asking?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t know where my place is?”

“Why would I?”

“Why would you? You were born in that fuckin’ house, for Christ sake.” His father turned that pissed-off look full on him.

“And then?” Roy said.

They stared at each other for a moment or two before his father looked away, gazed out the window. Or possibly at the window itself: it was fully dark now and the glass reflected his TV program, cars going round and round a dirt oval. “Guess I fooled the shit out of them, anyways,” he said, after a while.

“Who?”

“Goddamn doctors is who. Know what they thought?”

“No.”

“I was a dead man less they stuck some new liver in me. Who’s gonna argue with the old one now?”

Roy didn’t argue.

“Know my number on the list?”

“What list?”

“Got to get on a list for every goddamn organ. I’m in the fucking thousands.” He squinted at Roy. “Want to hear what’s even more fucked up than that?”

Roy said nothing: he had an idea what was next.

“The liver they give you-it could be a nigger’s.”

As he had expected. But Roy hadn’t heard the word in some time and it gave him a sick feeling in the gut, partly from the word itself, more from the fact of it coming from the lips of this man, his father. A nurse entered at that moment, didn’t say, “All done with your supper, now, Mr. Hill?” or “Got a visitor, I see,” or any other amiable remark Roy would have expected from the habitual cheeriness of her face. She just took the tray and left in silence. She’d heard, all right.

His father turned to him. Roy wondered whether he was embarrassed. “Any case,” his father said, “it’s not far.”

“What’s not far?”

“My place, of course. They don’t listen where you come from? Key’s under the mat. What’re you drivin’?”

“An Altima.”

“One of them little Jap shitboxes?”

Roy didn’t answer.

“You’re working, right? Got a job of some kind?”

Roy nodded.

“What as?”

“Shipping.”

“Lumber yard, that nature?”

“I’m with Globax.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Used to be Chemerica.”

“Never heard of that neither.”

Roy offered no explanation.

His father noticed a tiny bit of Jell-O on his plastic spoon, licked it off. “How’s the pay?”

“Not bad.”

“What’s that mean in dollars?”

“It means not bad.”

Roy’s father watched the cars racing on the inside of his window. “How’s that wife of yours?” He might have said yourn; Roy wasn’t sure.

“Good.”

Roy’s father raised his eyebrows. “Still together?”

“That’s right.”

“And the kid?”

“He’s good too.”

His father was toying with the plastic spoon, twisting it in his hands. “Why’d you go and give him a name like that for, anyways?”