Richard Ford - Let Me Be Frank With You

“Why…” I’m about to say something I’m not really sure about the nature of. Why have you told me this? Why should I believe you? Why would this come up now — when your last breaths are prizable and should be saved for prizable utterances? Why would I want to hear this? I’m looking down at poor Eddie. What my face portrays I don’t know. What should it portray? It’s possible I have no words or feelings for what Eddie’s just told me. Which is satisfactory.

“You-two-were-almost-divorced, Frank,” Eddie says speedily, as if my hands were around his neck. They aren’t.

“Well,” I say, and pause and think a moment, back through the years. “That’s not exactly true, Eddie.” I am immensely, imperturbably calm. A calm with few words. “We did get divorced. That’s true. But we weren’t almost divorced. We were married. That’s the wrong order. Time goes the other way. Or it used to.”

“I know,” Eddie croaks. “You and I didn’t know each other that well, Frank.” Again, the clattery, clunking fireplace-grate noises deep in Eddie’s breathing machinery — unidentifiable except as fatal.

“No,” I say. No, that’s right. No, you’re wrong. No, perhaps now’s the time for your last breath.

I have recently developed a tiny groove in the rear of my lower right canine, something my night guard should protect me against but of course doesn’t. My tongue finds it now and scours it until there’s a leakage of rich tongue blood I can taste. I also feel slight pelvic-pain heat below-decks. I’d like to get the fuck out of here; maybe stand outside and have a word in the driveway with Ezekiel Lewis, driver of the Skillman truck and scion of a long line of Haddam Lewises, stretching beyond last century’s mists, when their great-great-grandfather Stand-Off Lewis came up from Dixie accompanying a stalwart young white seminarian as his valet. And, naturally, stayed. I once employed Ezekiel’s father, Wardell, when I was in the realty business. They are our heritage here. We are their spoiled legacy. If I had one black friend in town, him or her I’d keep. There’d be plenty of laughing involved. Not this kind of tired, tiresome, unhappy, deathbed shit I’m putting up with at the moment. White people’s shit. No wonder we’re disappearing. We’re over-bred. Our genie’s out of its bottle.

“Tell me what you think of me, Frank.” Eddie’s regard wants to come back to me, but gets claimed by the two TVs high on the wall. Fox has loser Romney, addressing a convention of habited nuns, beaming as if he’d just won something. CNN has a smiling Andy Williams, who, it seems, has sadly died. Both — dead and alive — seek our approval.

But is this all that life comes down to when you take away damn near everything? What do you think of me? Tell me, tell me, tell me! My wife said the same thing to me just days ago. It must be grief not to know.

“It doesn’t change anything, Olive,” I say, not sure what I could mean by that. It’s just the truest thing I can say. Maybe Eddie would like me to give him a punch in the nose on his deathbed. (What would Finesse think of that ?) But I’m not mad — at anyone. A wound you don’t feel is not a wound. Time fixes things, mostly.

“I’m an insomniac, Frank,” Eddie says and coughs shallowly, fading eyes still on the TVs — which one I can’t be sure. Mitt or Andy. “Things get in my head and won’t go away.”

“Most insomniacs sleep more than they think they do, Eddie.” I take a step back from his bed. I’m departing. We both are.

Eddie’s cell phone on the bed starts ringing with a tune. What good is sit-ting a-lone in your room, come hear the muuu sic play.. .

“I’m dying and the fucking phone rings,” Eddie says, his wraith’s hand clutching, fumbling through the bedclothes. He smiles at me gratefully, venomously. “Lemme get this. If I can. Sorry.” He gasps and squeezes his weary eyes shut to be able to speak.

“Go for it, Olive.” I raise my hand like an Indian brave.

“Eddie Medley,” I hear him say, hoarse, high-pitched, evanescent. “Who’s this? Hello!”

Start by ad-mit-ting from crad-le to tomb is-n’t that long a stay.. .

I’m gone.

OUTSIDE, IN LATE-DECEMBER LATE-MORNING SPRING, it’s hard to believe that in one day’s time all will be white and Christmas-y, and I will be on a sentimental journey to the nation’s midsection. My son and I will have some laughs, crack some corny jokes, see a great river and the Great Plains’ commencement, eat some top KC sirloin, possibly visit Hallmark and the house of Thomas Hart Benton (a favorite of mine), and talk long into the night about rent-to-own. If I can only get there.

The two scolding crows have exited their branch in the beech tree. I hear them not far away in another yard, other things on their minds. Given all, I’m feeling surprisingly good about this day, with much of it still to come. The taste of blood in my mouth has vanished.

“ All right now, all right…” A voice I know — Ezekiel’s — coming round the side of Eddie’s deteriorating house, ready to slide the fuel bill under the door, as he does at my house. “… Christmas gift!” he sings out and smiles at me as if I’m a fixture out here on the pea gravel, no different from the Henry Moore bronze.

“Christmas gift,” I say back in the old southern way. Though he’s as Jersey as they come. Ezekiel is a strapping, smiling, shaved-head, spiritual dynamo in his green Skillman jumpsuit. We “go back” without having to know each other all that well or be friends. White southerners all think we “know” Negroes better than we do or could. They may think they know us, too — with better reason. Ezekiel, though, is good on any scale of human goodness. He is thirty-nine, attends the AME Tabernacle over in the black trace, coaches wrestling at the Y, teaches Sunday School, volunteers at the food bank. His wife, Be’ahtrice, teaches high school math and knows the universal sign language. He is bedrock. The best we have to offer.

Off, streets away, I hear again the bells of St. Leo gong-gonging out carols for the spiritually wavering. “Doesn’t feel much like Christmas,” I say.

“If you don’t like the weather…” Ezekiel’s going past me, smiling as if he has a secret.

“… just wait ten minutes,” I say. He is as fully expressed as anyone I know. “Are you heading for a big holiday, Mr. Lewis?” I say, standing by my still-warm car, taking him admiringly in.

“Oh, yeah. Count my blessings.” He’s bending to slip the yellow card under the door bottom. Eddie will never see it. Ezekiel is a huge man, though dainty in his practiced movements. “Our church’s taking a panel truck of food and whatever over to those people sufferin’ on The Shore. Cain’t do that much. But I’m here. So I cain’t do nothin’.” He’s headed back toward me in the sunny morning.

“That’s right,” I say. It is. I will think on it more. Time fixes things, but it is also short, and precious.

“I started taking Spanish lessons at the Y,” Ezekiel says. A trace of heating oil scent accompanies him, his big, soiled workman’s gloves in his hand. “Be’ahtrice and I are both doin’ it. There’s a church over in Asbury. A lot of ’em don’t even speak our language. How they gon’ make out?” He’s nodding, his cheeks partly inflated by thought. Christmas is serious to him. An opportunity. Heating oil is secondary.

We’re unexpectedly, then, trapped in the instant — too much sudden seriousness. We fall silent. Though he smiles at me in recognition. I smile back. It becomes for us a moment to know the expanding largeness of it all.