Then Rhonda put Nathan in the bed and started to tuck him in. Nathan just lay there and giggled and then he reached out and tried to touch her breasts. Now instead of moving like she usually did, Rhonda just sat there. Nathan reached out some more and touched her breasts again.
She said: “Nathan, you better not do that.”
Then she was quiet and grinned: “You’re rotten to your core.”
Nathan touched and then touched some more. They weren’t giggling anymore.
I went into the other room to leave them alone, but when I sat down on the couch, I could still see them saying goodnight.
Nathan sat up in his bed and Rhonda started doing the hand signals she used to help communicate with him. But now they were whispering to each other and I heard Rhonda say: “Okay now. I gotta go.”
And then she pointed to her eye.
Then she pointed to her heart.
Then she pointed to Nathan.
Then Nathan was quiet and he did the same thing.
He pointed to his eye.
I.
Then he pointed to his heart.
Love.
Then he pointed to Rhonda.
You.
Rhonda kissed him goodbye and said: “Well you just look at my picture, and I’ll be back in the morning.”
And so she left and Nathan just sat there and looked at Rhonda’s picture in the moonlight.
I tried talking to Nathan, but he was too busy looking at it.
And so he stared at the picture beside his bed.
It was a picture of Rhonda.
It was a picture of the woman he loved.
This went on until Ruby started getting jealous.
“He don’t need no woman. All he needs is me,” I heard Ruby say one day.
And then one evening Ruby told Rhonda right to her face: “Well you’re just a fat old thing. Big around as can be.”
Rhonda told Ruby she didn’t have any room to talk. But then Rhonda started crying. She left. This went on for months.
After that Ruby started complaining about how Rhonda kept coming in late and how one night Rhonda didn’t show up at all. Then one night Ruby told her not to come. Rhonda left crying again, and Nathan lay in the bed and didn’t say anything. PISSED OFF.
The next day I went into Nathan’s bedroom and he was still in bed.
I said: “How are you doing, Nathan?”
He didn’t say anything.
I asked him how he was doing again.
He still didn’t say anything.
I twisted his ear.
He didn’t even act like I was there.
He turned over in his bed, staring at Rhonda’s picture.
He started watching soap operas again, but then it happened. One day on the soap opera, the actress he loved was walking across the street, and her husband’s crazy ex-wife hit the gas and ran her over. Her husband was there and held her in his arms as she died.
And so I imagine that Nathan just sat there unable to do anything, listening to her whisper, “I love you. I’m so sorry I didn’t do more to love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And then… “I’ll love you forever.”
So Nathan watched her die and whispered it inside his head, I love you too.
And now it wasn’t an actress anymore he watched on TV, but a beautiful woman he had loved for a long time.
WHAT HAPPENED?
So nobody really knows what happened. I was outside when I heard Ruby scream.
I came running inside. There was a drawer on the floor and newspapers. Ruby said, “I was in the back room and when I came back the poor thing was like this.”
There was a set of knives on the counter beside the sink. He was in front of his chair. The chair was turned over. His legs were beneath the table. He was on his back. There was a steak knife sticking straight out of his chest.
There was an ambulance. Lights were flashing around and around.
There was a stretcher… ambulance guys… bringing Nathan out on a stretcher.
And then the back of the ambulance.
He tried to take his own life, but he survived. He didn’t die.
So after Nathan’s knife wound, he didn’t do much of anything but sit around at the kitchen table and watch it all go by.
One day I was sitting at the table with him, and he leaned over on his elbow and started rolling his 7UP bottle back and forth like he was bored.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
He breathed a soft sigh and batted his eyelids.
He had movie star blue eyes.
So he sat and I wondered if he was thinking about the fact that he was the one who stayed. He was the one who sat watching his younger brothers when they were little boys, and then watching them leave the house when they were grown men.
He was the one who stayed because he had to stay. He was the one who was sitting at the table now, where he was always sitting, remembering how his brothers returned with their young wives, all pink and pretty, and pretty and pink, and pink and pretty, and pretty and pink and pink and pink and with accents from faraway places.
And then a few years later, returning once more with pink children of their own.
So I felt his muscle and laughed, trying to make the quiet go away.
But he was quiet now because he knew he would never have any of this. I saw what he saw sitting there—that there would be no brides or babies. There would be none of this. He blinked and breathed another soft sigh with a look on his face like…
Oh shit I’m trapped in my body…
Oh shit I’m trapped in my body.
And so there was no more Rhonda.
There was no more Rhonda until after Nathan died.
After the wake was over, and the funeral was over too, and everybody was walking away, I went back to pick up something, or help my aunt walk back through the mud.
I looked up, and when I did, all the way in the back of the crowd of people was a woman.
It was a woman all by herself.
It was Rhonda.
She was crying so hard that I thought she was going to fall down.
She was crying and her chest was going up and down, up and down, and she was trying to walk back to her car.
A couple of months later, on a bright evening, just before the sunset, I went by the grave. It was fall and there was this glow over everything, and it was so bright. And it was all still there—the gravestone and the old tree, and the old flowers were there too. But now there was something new in front of Nathan’s gravestone. It was a little teddy bear covered in fur and there was a little note beside it. So I opened it up and saw a picture of a heart, and beneath the heart was a note that said, “I love you, and I’ll always love you Nathan.” It was just like in the soap opera. And then beside the heart was a single name. It said…
…Rhonda.
But wait.
I have decided to stop for a moment.
I want to stop for a moment before they die. I am not ready yet.
I want to stop and remember them for a moment as they were, when we were all together, when they were still alive. I want to remember Ruby’s food and Ruby’s table and Nathan’s laugh.
On Sunday I sat and smelled the chicken and gravy, bubbling up all brown and beautiful. I stood and dusted all the JFK commemorative pop bottles—and spoons from the 50 states—and a bird clock chirp-chirping the time. It was a bird clock that chirped a cardinal at two o’clock and then an Eastern Woodlands Oriole at four o’clock. So if you were outside and heard a robin chirp you were fucked up the whole day thinking it was three o’clock.
Then I dusted the plastic frogs going ribbet ribbet every time I walked by.
I dusted the pictures of Jesus and footprints in the sand.
I dusted a bowl of bread glazed stiff for decoration and a shotgun sitting up behind the door.
I walked around the recliner and the radio playing radio preachers and gospel tapes.
&nbs
p; So Ruby stood at the stove and I asked: “Grandma, where’d you get these flowers?”
My grandma said: “Oh Larry sent ’em to me. He sent me some to give to Mae too but I liked her flowers better so I just kept them both.”
She was always doing stuff like this.
A STORY ABOUT RUBY TAKING STUFF
One day we went over to Aunt Shirley’s and Shirley had just put this new mirror on the wall. Grandma said it was pretty. Ruby walked over and took it off the wall because she wanted it for herself.
Shirley said: “Ruby, you can’t take that with you. That’s mine.”
Ruby said: “Oh but you have so much stuff.” Then she put it under her arm and we left. Aunt Shirley just stood there.
I looked at Ruby now and I saw all of the things she knew. She knew how to do all kinds of things no one else knew how to do.
She knew how to render lard and make soap.
She knew how to make biscuits from scratch and slaughter a hawg if she had to. And she knew how to do things that are all forgotten now—things that people from Ohio buy because it says homemade on the tag. I looked at the quilt she was working on. The quilt wasn’t a fucking symbol of anything. It was something she made to keep her children warm. Remember that. Fuck symbols.
Then she said: “Okay, I think it’s ready.”
…We all sat down and started eating the chicken and gravy and I did it like this. I took a giant spoon and started scooping out all kinds of gravy all over my plate and plopped out a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Then I grabbed myself a chicken leg and got to it. I sat and first started eating all the gravy with a spoon. Then I looked out across the table, and there were cucumbers in vinegar, and homemade biscuits, mayonnaise salad, green beans, pickles, fried chicken, chocolate cake, angel food cake, chicken, brown beans, peas in butter, chicken, more biscuits, and gravy, gravy, gravy. Then Grandma started telling us about how my father was born on the kitchen table and how the doctor was drunk.
Ruby told us about how the doctor was really a dentist but would deliver babies. She told us how she gave birth to him on the kitchen table. After he was born he was so pretty and shining and new. She just held him in her arms—the prettiest baby you’ve ever saw, the prettiest baby she had. He was so pretty that the doctor offered to give her twenty dollars for him or trade him for another baby he had out in his truck. But she didn’t trade him. She just held him close to her heart and listened to him whimper. We listened to the story and ate our chicken and gravy. Then I skimmed the bowl and got out a couple of more bites and it was all gone.
So after dinner was over I watched Grandma gather up all the dishes and put them in the sink.
Then Grandma said: “Well, Todd, you sure didn’t eat much. You’re just a skinny thing—look sickly.”
But I didn’t say anything about Todd not being my name. She wouldn’t listen anyway because she was on to something else now.
I started washing the dishes and then she started going on about how I didn’t need to throw away the styrofoam plates because she could use them again.
I said: “Well you can’t wash styrofoam plates and use them again. It’s not healthy. You can’t get them clean.”
But Ruby just told me to wash them and said: “Well that’s all right. That’s the reason I got something.”
After dinner I took a nap and I dreamed a dream about the future and in this future I was dreaming a dream about the past. But in my dreams I’m always back at Ruby’s house, and back at Ruby’s table. It’s always Sunday again and we’re all just sitting around the table like we always did. Nathan’s on one side and I’m on the other and my grandma’s on the left. And just like always she’s fixed chicken and gravy and we’re all so hungry and passing the plates—the biscuits, the mayonnaise salad, the cucumbers in vinegar, and I think to myself, even now, that this will be what the final moments of oxygen escaping from my brain will be like. It’ll be like a Sunday so long ago with all of the dead stuffing themselves full of food cooked with lard, and gravy that will once again clog their arteries and kill their hearts. It will be the feast of death and it will taste so delicious.
Then I dreamed that she was gone and yet, even now there’s still something about me that believes I can bring her back from the dead. There’s something in me that wants them to rise from the grave and go back there. There’s something about me that wishes I could see them again.
But wait! There’s still something that makes sense.
There’s still the recipe for chicken and gravy. There may still be something of Ruby inside of it. So here’s the recipe…
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) frying chicken, cut up
2 cups of buttermilk
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of onion powder
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Butter
Flour
Directions
Wash chicken and pat dry. In a large bowl, stir together buttermilk, garlic powder, onion powder, flour and butter. Place chicken in buttermilk mixture and refrigerate.
In a large cast iron frying pan, heat oil to 325 degrees F. Drain chicken in a colander to remove excess buttermilk. Place flour and butter in a large paper bag. Add chicken. Close top and gently shake bag to coat chicken with batter mix. Remove chicken and fry, turning pieces over after 3 minutes. Continue to fry, turning until brown on all sides.
And if you’re reading this—you can go into your kitchen and try making it right now. And even if you don’t know how to cook, wherever you are, and far away into the future, maybe you can make this chicken and gravy and we can bring these zombies back to life again.
YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A RECIPE
I had to take Nathan to the bathroom. It had already been a horrible day. That morning on the way over to the doctor’s office my grandma kept going on about Nathan grabbing the steering wheel and killing us all. I had just got my license and Nathan was sitting in the passenger seat. Ruby was full of anxiety in the back and then she said it again, “Now, Nathan, don’t you grab the steering wheel and wreck and make us crash over the mountain and kill us all.” Nathan just shook his head like Fuck. Do you seriously think I’m going to grab the wheel and wreck us? Do you really think that?
Then he circled his finger around and around his head and told her she was crazy.
I said, “He’s not psychotic, Grandma. He just needs a wheelchair.”
Then we had to wait a couple of hours before the foot doctor could cut Grandma’s toenails. Now here we were eating at Captain D’s and Nathan had this look on his face. That look meant one thing: He had to go to the bathroom. He had to go to the bathroom BAD.
So I got up from the booth and took hold of his wheelchair when Ruby stopped us. She reached into her giant purse and pulled out his pee bottle inside a plastic bag. Then she handed it to me. I just laughed and said: “Well, Grandma, you don’t have to show off the pee bottle to everyone.” Nathan just waved his finger and stomped his foot which meant: I don’t even need the pee bottle. I need to go the other thing.
Ruby told us we might need it. You never know. Then I put the pee bottle on Nathan’s lap and started pushing his wheelchair to the bathroom when she thought of something else. “Little Nathan, you need these too.” Then she pulled out a fresh pair of boxer shorts she kept in her purse. Nathan lowered his head.
I took the pair of boxers and put them in my back pocket. I tried to make a joke about it to make it less uncomfortable. “Shit, Nathan, you’re like a superhero. I need to start carrying around my own change of underwear.”
Nathan didn’t say anything and just held the pee bottle on his lap. We passed the other people who were sitting in their booths. They looked up from their greasy fish and watched us pass. They were staring at Nathan and his pee bottle. Nathan stared back and held his pee bottle. I tried making another joke, “Hey, Nathan. You ever drink beer out of that pee bottle before? If we
get lost on the way back home we can use it as a canteen.”
But he didn’t laugh.
He needed to go to the bathroom.
So I stopped in front of the men’s bathroom and tried to open the door, but it was locked. SHIT. I told Nathan that someone must be inside. Nathan tapped his foot against the ground. He needed to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t stop talking, “You know it probably looks funny two guys going to the bathroom together. This is the kind of place where two guys going to the bathroom together could get their asses kicked.”
Nathan didn’t laugh. He tapped his foot and we waited. Then a Captain D’s employee said something. So I walked over to her and left Nathan in front of the door. She said, “That bathroom is out of order. You’re going to have to use the ladies’ room.”
I nodded my head and walked back to Nathan who had a new look on his face. It was a look that said, I need to use the bathroom. I need to use the bathroom. I need to use the bathroom.
I told Nathan we were going to have to use the ladies’ room. I started to move him towards the bathroom, but then I saw an old woman out of the corner of my eye. “Mam,” I said, but it was too late. She was already inside.
The door lock popped.
Pop.
Nathan lowered his head.
Crapalachia: A Biography of Place Page 5
