Life at 8 mph

by Peter Bowling Anderson

  I shook my head and exhaled, trying to process it all. It was a lot to absorb. Richard was certainly more resilient than I.

  Since Richard was an ordained minister, I asked Mike if he pastored a church. Mike said, “No, but if you need to get married in a pinch, he can help you out.”

  “Ah, no, no, I’m good in that department,” I quickly answered. I wasn’t ready to get married, and besides, I didn’t even have a girlfriend. I couldn’t find a job, I was living in the spare bedroom of my friend’s parents’ house, and we shared a car with a bad muffler and 203,000 miles on it. Marriage was currently near the bottom of my to-do list.

  Before I hung up, I asked Mike one last question, since he’d been friends with Richard for several years. “How long did it take you to understand Richard’s speech without any difficulty?”

  Mike said, “Without any difficulty? I’m still working on that. But you’ll get the hang of it. Don’t worry—you’ll catch on pretty quickly. You two will hit it off.”

  He made it sound like I already worked for Richard.

  After we said goodbye, I wrote out a list of pros and cons for the job. I thought of quite a few cons but only one pro. I studied my list and then put it in a drawer because it was depressing. The only pro seemed to outweigh all the cons, no matter their merit.

  Since I was on the clock and had to make a decision by tomorrow, I decided to keep my word and actually do what I’d told Richard I needed time to do: I prayed to God for guidance and wisdom to make the right choice, because I needed it big time. My biggest fear was that if I agreed to work for Richard, I’d bail out after a few weeks and let him down, and though I didn’t know him, it was clear he’d already been let down too many times. If I was going to disappoint him, sooner was far kinder than later.

  The next morning, I called Richard and told him yes.

  It surprised even me. The one pro, money, had tilted the balance, as did perhaps my dread of a guilty conscience. Nothing motivated quite as powerfully as guilt or fear. This time, guilt won.

  Of course, I never could’ve guessed at the time, but that was the beginning of five years of working with Richard. And as much as Richard needed my help, I needed his more.

  Chapter Two

  The Outsider

  My first day working with Richard was enlightening, to say the least. I wasn’t sure how to dress, so since he’d worn a business shirt and slacks for our interview, I dusted off the only suit I owned and wore it to his home. It was 102 degrees outside and the air conditioner in my car had conceded defeat. By the time I walked into Richard’s duplex, I was soaked with sweat. Not a good start to the day. To drive home the point that I’d overdressed, Richard looked over my attire and teased, “You getting married?” He started laughing so hard, he began coughing violently. I thought he was about to die under my care on my first day. Was I supposed to call 911? Do the Heimlich maneuver? Get out of the way so Troy Aikman could hopefully save the day? I jumped up and held his giant water bottle, a sixty-four-ounce Conoco cup with a sturdy handle and a long, bendable plastic hose of a straw, under his mouth so he could drink some water to slow the dying process. He took a sip, but brown liquid flowed through the straw. I later learned that Richard’s favorite drink was sweet tea, and he rarely drank “boring” water, as he put it.

  Once his hacking subsided and I’d gotten my heart rate down, he smiled and garbled something about how he coughed a lot when laughing and that I’d get used to it. I was just glad he didn’t die.

  I filled out the long application, which he said was a formality but required by his payroll company for a background check, and then he showed me around his home. The kitchen was small but clean, as was the hall bathroom. His night attendant took care of the cleaning and got him ready for bed, while his morning attendant showered him and prepared him for the day. Suddenly, my shift looked like the best slot in the rotation. As a card-carrying germaphobe, helping someone use the bathroom was just above licking beef stew off the street.

  Michael’s room was the messiest in the duplex, but that was a kid’s duty. As Richard showed me around, I wondered how his morning attendant showered him and how both caregivers got him in and out of bed. Were they power lifters weighing three hundred pounds each? Was I ever expected to hoist Richard out of his chair or into my car? Was back surgery covered in the contract I’d just signed?

  And wait a minute—was I going to have to help him use the bathroom?!!!

  Dear God, I’m going to pass out, I thought, feeling lightheaded.

  As if he were reading my mind, Richard told me to look up at the ceiling in his bedroom. In addition to a water stain or two, I saw a track running along the ceiling from his bed to his bathroom. He positioned his chair underneath the end of the track and hit a button on a remote that lowered a metal handle that looked like a large hanger with hooks. It took a while for me to understand what was supposed to happen next, but two of the three wide straps hanging from the hooks were placed underneath his hamstrings and their ends pulled up to fasten to the outside hooks, while the widest strap slipped around his back and under his arms and then fastened to the inner hooks. And then a button on the remote lifted him up out of his chair like a stork carrying a new baby. That was how his attendants transported him in and out of his wheelchair, bed, and bathroom. The track and straps did all the heavy lifting for them, which was a relief.

  I joked, “I’m glad, because my back was already hurting thinking about trying to lift you out of that chair.”

  Richard grew very serious and concerned, and said, “You can’t. You’d get hurt lifting my fat butt…and so would I.”

  I nodded, and replied, “Don’t worry. I only lift people on the weekends.”

  He grinned, and said, “Okay. Okay.”

  He led me back to his living room to his work station. I sat down at his computer, and he showed me where his class assignments were online. I wasn’t used to operating a Mac, and the flat mouse on the keypad felt awkward and hypersensitive. I was afraid to touch it. It was like I was typing on an ice skating rink. However, Richard’s cerebral palsy had ravaged his fingers so much that he couldn’t operate an old-fashioned mouse. His right index finger was the only digit he used for his wheelchair’s joystick and for his computer. When he tried to type something, he implemented a slow-motion version of hunt and peck.

  I read through his first class’s syllabus, when I noticed something extremely disturbing: The class was over in three days, and he’d yet to turn in anything! I just stared at the screen for a few moments hoping a flood of assignments would instantly post. Not one test? No papers? Nothing? I slowly turned to Richard while forcing a smile. He smiled back. I peeked at the screen. Nope, still no assignments.

  Not only had Richard almost died on my first day, but he was going to flunk school, too. I was beginning to understand why the other guy left.

  But what about the other fella? Surely they’d done some work together. “Richard, did you and your other attendants work on any of these assignments? Do you have any rough drafts you’re writing?” Pretty please.

  His chair sprang to life as he rolled to the computer, and I gladly scooted away from his academic disaster zone. After touching a few buttons, a document appeared. It was a paper, or more accurately, a sermon, rife with grammatical errors and, at times, incoherent. “This is my paper for class,” he explained.

  I nodded repeatedly while scrolling through, hoping to reassure him while trying to figure out how I could quit without devastating him. This was a lost cause. The paper needed to be completely rewritten, and it was only one assignment. I asked Richard, “What about the other things due?”

  Then he pushed a few more buttons and showed me the percentages assigned to each project. The paper was a huge chunk of his grade. Though he hadn’t turned in anything else, if he managed to get an “A” on his paper, he would barely pass the course. “See,”
he said.

  I did see. It was the bottom of the ninth, two outs, and we needed a grand slam on the final pitch or he was getting placed on academic probation or possibly dropped from the program. That would mean my tutoring hours probably would disappear.

  I turned back to Richard, who still had his movie star smile plastered across his face. Yet I couldn’t help but notice a trace of desperation in his eyes. He knew I was his last chance at passing. Still, I had to be honest with him, and I said, “I’m sorry, Richard, but I…I just don’t think this is doable. Not in the amount of time left.”

  I literally started patting my pockets as subtly as possible to make sure I had my wallet and keys. I was done. It hadn’t worked out, and that was that. He didn’t need a tutor, he needed a do-over in life because his was an endless series of unfair and unlucky breaks, betrayals, and heartaches, and this was the latest. But just as I was about to push away from the computer to stand to deliver the crushing news to Richard, he simply asked, “Can’t we try?”

  He might as well have handcuffed me to my chair and barred his front door, because after that, I couldn’t go anywhere. There was no leaving now. How in the world could I have said no to that? He’d trapped me again just by being himself. It was almost amusing. I wondered if this would be a daily occurrence.

  Richard had received permission from his professor to write the paper in sermon format (after all, it was a Christian school), so at least that was acceptable. Now I just needed to start from scratch with Richard and edit as we went. Since we had only three days, I set a goal for us to finish a third of the paper by the end of the day, which meant we were in for a lot of work.

  I didn’t realize the battle would be waged on two fronts.

  Richard hated being cooped up, and I couldn’t blame him. If I’d spent my whole life crammed in a wheelchair unable to walk, I would’ve craved mobility, too. Plus, Richard was a minister, a people person, so he wanted to be out and about interacting with his community. However, while I sympathized with him and completely understood his yearnings, we needed to stay put and work relentlessly on the paper if we were going to have any chance of completing it in time and earning an “A.” But after an hour and a half of painstakingly translating and editing Richard’s thoughts into his sermon, he got a phone call. And then another call about ten minutes later from the repairman who worked on his wheelchair. They talked for a good twenty-five minutes. Then Richard needed me to send an email to his mentor at the seminary, which took quite a while. Then another call. And another two emails.

  Then it was lunchtime. He asked if I was hungry because it was time to eat. There went half the day.

  As we emerged from Richard’s dimly lit duplex into the blinding midday sun, my mood rapidly deteriorated. I was already sweating in my stupid suit, I didn’t know where we were walking, and we’d barely finished the first page of his paper. It was supposed to be fifteen to twenty pages long. We didn’t have a prayer.

  I followed behind Richard and Troy as they led the way down the street. Troy wore his snazzy red service dog vest and seemed just as excited as Richard to be uncaged. I felt like a third wheel on their date. I still didn’t know where we were headed, but I guessed/hoped East Gourmet Buffet on the corner. The blast furnace that is Fort Worth in the summer was too unforgiving for a longer walk. Richard didn’t own a wheelchair-accessible van—or any vehicle, for that matter—so we’d be walking or riding the bus everywhere.

  Thankfully, Richard lived near a strip mall just across the railroad tracks that had everything from a pet store to a grocery store to another Chinese restaurant. I never knew Asian cuisine was so popular in Fort Worth. Ten years earlier, I’d lived here while attending seminary, but after graduating with a master’s in communications, I moved with two schoolmates to Atlanta to pursue a band we’d started. I hadn’t returned since. It looked the same but different, as any place did after enough time and space. My perspective had changed since school, perhaps less optimistic or more realistic regarding the world’s offerings, depending on my cynicism that day. One thing I’d learned for certain was that a dream rarely materialized to code; it came with leaky pipes and shoddy wiring and usually didn’t offer a second walk-through.

  I gladly held open the door to East Gourmet Buffet for Richard and Troy as we escaped the heat. I’d never walked into a restaurant with a dog and I was a little nervous we’d be kicked out. But the hostess smiled at Richard and quickly ushered us to a table. I could tell Richard had been here before, and when the waitress immediately took his Conoco water bottle to refill his sweet tea, I knew he was a regular.

  I’d brought along my sack with a little bag of chips and two cookies, my daily lunch on a shoestring budget, and opened it on our table. I didn’t have enough money to eat out, and I certainly wasn’t assuming Richard was treating. He lived on his own tight budget with nothing extra to spare.

  Yet that was exactly what he did.

  He saw my sad little meal and shook his head and smiled. “You gonna feed the birds?”

  I laughed out loud at that one. He did have a good sense of humor. I said, “No, this is my lunch. You go ahead. I’m good.”

  In about a nanosecond, he was beside me, tugging my arm. “Come on, you’re eating food today,” he ordered.

  I stood up and followed him and Troy over to the buffet spread. There were heated trays of egg rolls, fried shrimp, beef and vegetable mixes, soups, egg foo young, and on and on. I didn’t know where to begin. Then I saw the dessert table with cookies, cakes, and three kinds of pudding. I almost started drooling. I looked down at Richard, but he just smiled, waiting. Then I remembered I was there to help him. “Oh, okay, what would you like?”

  There were only five other guests in the restaurant, and none of them seemed too interested in us. Perhaps they were also regulars and had seen Richard and his dog many times. The staff acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. It dawned on me that I’d entered Richard’s world and not the other way around. I was the outsider, the unfamiliar face, and he’d survived for years on his own before I showed up. I was going to have to adapt, not him. I had plenty of insecurities and inhibitions that were all going to be put to a serious test working for him. And it scared me to death. I wanted to drop the plate and run straight out the door, but Troy would’ve eaten the food and ruined his strict service dog diet. Besides, Richard wanted some more gravy on his egg foo young.

  R

  That afternoon I met Michael, Richard’s youngest son. He was ten and attended an elementary school four blocks away. Richard told me he needed to break from working on the paper to go pick him up, and he asked if I wanted to follow in my car. At first, I didn’t understand. “Do you want me to drive him home?” I asked.

  “You gonna give me a ride, too?” he said with a snort and a cough.

  “Huh?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  “Follow me,” he said with a wave and another snort as he charged up the ramp to his front door.

  I drove behind Richard with my flashers on the whole way to the school. I was going eight miles an hour (Richard’s max speed) and was terrified I’d rear-end him. He was going much faster than when we’d walked to the restaurant, so there was no way I could’ve kept up with him without driving. He didn’t want to make Michael wait, which I thought was considerate.

  I pulled into the long line of cars in front of the school with parents waiting for kids, while Richard snaked his way through the crowd to meet Michael. I still wasn’t sure how we were transporting Michael home, or when that might be. I was at the back of a very long line. Richard passing his class seemed more hopeless by the minute.

  Then I saw them, but it wasn’t what I’d expected.

  Richard barreled out of the school weaving his way through the throng of parents and kids like a downhill skier on the giant slalom, as Michael reclined on his dad’s lap like he was in a La-Z-Boy watching cartoons. All Mi
chael needed was popcorn. As they approached my car, Michael looked completely relaxed, as if this were a normal, everyday occurrence with no cause for alarm. Of course, I later learned it was. Perhaps he was trying to calm me down, because all I kept thinking was, If he tumbles out of that chair and Richard runs him over, I was never here. I glanced around for my quickest escape route.

  Michael looked like a mini-Richard, just without CP. Same nose, eyes, hair. He was smiling when they pulled up next to my car. “This is Michael,” Richard boasted with a huge smile.

  I introduced myself, but before our chitchatting got carried away, Richard instructed, “Follow me,” and took off. I trailed with my hazards on again, though I did notice he was motoring a tad slower with precious cargo in tow.

  When we returned to Richard’s duplex, I asked Michael how long his dad had been shuttling him to school and how it began. I asked him if they ever went off-roading. I asked what he and his dad talked about as they drove. Yet I unexpectedly stumbled on a landmine. Richard had been steadily boiling and finally growled, “Ask me!” I looked at Richard, and his Hollywood smile was long gone. Lasers shot out of his eyes straight through me, while his right index finger rested on his chair’s joystick like he was a bull set to charge.

  “Sorry?” was all I could muster.

  “You ask me! You wanna know something ’bout me, ask me,” Richard snapped, eyeing me for the slightest trace of defiance.

  Fearing for my life, I nodded and immediately answered, “Yes, sir.”

  I soon learned this was a cardinal sin, one of the most aggravating and intolerable aspects of Richard’s life with cerebral palsy. Richard loved talking to people, but his speech impairment made it difficult for them to understand him. Most gave up after a short time and simply directed their questions to the attendant, friend, or family member accompanying Richard. It made him feel invisible and insignificant, like he wasn’t worth the time and effort required to comprehend his words.