Recovering Charles

by Jason F. Wright

  To Dad, though, his premonitions were an important part of who he was and what he’d accomplished. They mattered to Dad. THEY MATTERED.

  Some were silly. For example, Dad always drove with trash bags, scissors, a funnel, a shovel, and duct tape in the trunk of his car. He said you never knew when you might need them. But we teased him relentlessly that he could never open the trunk in front of anyone for fear they’d think they were about to become a victim of some grisly crime. Dad said if I wasn’t careful, I might be.

  Other premonitions were serious. Like saving a life.

  One last thing. I remember Dad didn’t speak to me as we drove home from Cracker Barrel that evening in the winter of ’90. (Early December, I think.)

  But when he pulled the car into the garage and turned off the engine, we both unbuckled and he grabbed me in a hug. All the way home I’d been trying so hard not to cry. I remember the stick shift digging into my side.

  Dad said, “Luke, I’m going to save your mother.”

  I hadn’t felt so good since Grandma died. I cried like a baby.

  There you have it. Thanks for listening. I don’t deserve friends like you. J I’ll call tonight.

  Luke

  Chapter

  12

  By lunchtime I was in Knoxville, Tennessee.

  I pulled into a McDonald’s and sat in a corner booth with my Two Cheeseburger Meal and a cold Barq’s. I unfolded the USA Today I’d picked up that morning in the lobby of the hotel. The Katrina images on the front page were captivating. The kind of pictures a photographer wishes he’d taken himself. I wondered how often someone saw one of my shots and wished they’d been the one holding the camera.

  When I was young, Dad liked to drive by buildings and say, “See that one? Now that’s an engineering marvel. I sure wish I’d designed it.” He’d even been known to walk into some of the most eye-catching buildings and ask if he could give himself a tour.

  Once, when I was assigned to write a paper in the ninth grade about a famous Texas landmark, Dad helped me narrow down the teacher’s list of twenty or thirty choices. When I told Dad I thought the description for the Spanish Governor’s Palace sounded pretty cool, he asked me if I’d like to see it in person.

  “It’s in San Antonio, Dad.”

  “So?”

  “We live in Dallas.”

  “Your point is?”

  I couldn’t have talked Dad out of it even if I’d wanted to.

  Two days later, on a Saturday, Dad woke me up at 6:00 am and we drove three hundred miles south to San Antonio. Dad bought me a disposable camera on the way and two more from a gift shop. We visited the Spanish Governor’s Palace and Dad walked through it with childlike wonder. We took a cruise down the two-and-a-half mile Riverwalk and bought Mom a keychain for her collection.

  Then we ate at McDonald’s. In fact, we ate at McDonald’s four times that weekend.

  I slid the newspaper aside and dialed Jordan’s cell.

  “Hey, I recognize that number,” she said, answering the phone.

  Her voice made me smile.

  “What’s up today?” I asked. Of course I wasn’t terribly interested in what her schedule looked like, but the car had already become a lonely place and I wasn’t even close to New Orleans.

  “Same stuff,” she said. “Hold on a minute.”

  I heard her office door creak shut.

  “I got your e-mail.”

  “Good. Sorry if I rambled.”

  “Luke. Uh, hello? Don’t be crazy. I loved it. That was quite a dream. And quite a guy, huh?”

  “Quite a guy,” I repeated, squeezing more ketchup onto a corner of my cheeseburger wrapper.

  “So where are you?”

  “Knoxville. Lunchtime.”

  She didn’t have to ask. “Golden Arches.”

  “What can I say.” I stuck five fries in my mouth and added what I always said when we had the “diet discussion.” “I’ve got a thing for clowns.”

  “You know I’m rolling my eyes, right?”

  “Why do you think I called?”

  She laughed, I smiled, and for the first time that day I thought of something besides my father.

  “Any news from the guy?”

  “Jerome. And none. He called yesterday but I’ve not been able to get him on the phone. The news has been saying cell service in the city is pretty spotty. So who knows.”

  I heard the creaky door again.

  “I hate to say it, but I’ve got to run.”

  “Hot lunch date?”

  “I wish. No, I’m showing a place at 1:30.”

  “Of course. I gotta go, too. Lots of road still today.”

  “Drive safely?”

  “Always.”

  “Call me tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “Luke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re the best.”

  “You, too.”

  ~ ~

  Dad believed in love at first sight.

  He’d fallen for Mom instantly because one of his premonitions told him he would. And though he never pushed the same expectation on me, I always suspected he thought I’d meet my true love the same way.

  Dad was in his den playing Eagles’ songs on his guitar when I came home from my first official double date. Mom had probably been asleep for hours.

  “So?” Dad asked.

  “So what?”

  “So how was it?”

  “Awesome. Really awesome.”

  “Really awesome?”

  I started giggling. “Yeah, Dad, thanks for letting me go. It was really fun.”

  “How fun?” Dad raised his eyebrows so high they looked like they’d been surgically replanted. “Hmm?”

  “Come on, Dad, cut it out, it was fun. We had a fun time.”

  “So give me your O.G.T.”

  For as long as I’ve been alive, or at least as far back as I remember, my parents and I had a system for coaxing One Good Thing from each other about our days. Mom and Dad said there was always One Good Thing about even the very worst of days. At the dinner table, in the car, during a commercial on TV, it didn’t matter—anyone could call for an O.G.T.

  “Quit stalling over there and give me your O.G.T.”

  “Do I have to?”

  Dad flicked his guitar pick at my head.

  “Fine. My One Good Thing for today . . . This could be tough, what with all the firsts that happened tonight.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up again.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Get on with it, before my O.G.T. involves you and an ambulance.”

  I took a seat on Dad’s leather recliner and popped the leg rest up. “She let me hold her hand during the movie.”

  “Let you?”

  “We kept bumping them in the popcorn bucket, so finally I just grabbed it and held it there.”

  “In the popcorn bucket?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dad pretended to beat his head with the neck of his guitar.

  I giggled some more.

  “So you liked her.”

  “No, Dad, I didn’t like her. She smelled like fish tacos and kept talking about Dungeons and Dragons all night. Booooring.”

  Now Dad was laughing, too.

  “Of course I like her, old man. That’s why I asked her out. She’s awesome.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Good time. Good movie. Awesome girl. Plus Jaime and Zac had a good time, too. We’re totally doing it again.”

  “But she’s not the one.”

  “The one?”

  “The one you’ll love.”

  “How am supposed to know that? I’m just a kid.”

  “You’d know. There’s a spark when you’re together that you can almost see. And there’s a pain you can hardly bear when you’re not. It’s called being . . . together.”

  “I guess I don’t get it.”

  “You will. Trust me.”

  I spent the rest of the evening helping Da
d write a song.

  Chapter

  13

  I was only a hundred and ten miles from New Orleans.

  But pushing on any farther wasn’t an option. By 9:00 pm my eyes were bleary and my rear end was numb. Not to mention my growing concern at navigating through a darkened New Orleans still mostly underwater.

  I pulled into a Holiday Inn Express in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. One corner of the parking lot was filled two-stories high with broken trees, small brush, and building debris.

  “Hi. Can I get a room for the night?” I slid my license and credit card across the counter.

  The woman greeting me in jeans and a T-shirt laughed. “Oh, sure.”

  “You’re booked?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “I’ll take whatever. Two double-beds. Maybe a suite? Anything. Been driving all day.”

  She answered with a look. Disbelief. Exhaustion.

  The look isn’t just killing me, I thought, it’s burying me and planting daisies on top.

  I guess I had noticed increasing evidence of Katrina the farther south I drove, but hadn’t realized just how badly the northern towns off the coast had been affected by the storm.

  “Mostly locals?” I asked. “Or folks from New Orleans?”

  “New Orleans, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Gulfport. All over.”

  “I see. Any suggestions on other hotels?” I looked at her shirt for a name tag. There wasn’t one.

  “Hey, eyes up, eyes up.”

  “I was looking for your name—forget it.”

  “It’s ChantŽ. And no, not many rooms this far south. A lot of hotels aren’t even reopened yet, so that makes it even harder to handle the load.”

  “I see.”

  Women are good at gauging when men feel like idiots. “It’s nice of you to travel down to help. We need all we can get.”

  “Oh, no. I mean, no, I’m not exactly going down to help.” I felt so small I could have walked under the stack of newspapers on the counter without having to duck.

  “If you’d like, I can ask one of our guests if they wouldn’t mind sharing.”

  “No, no, no, I couldn’t do that to someone.”

  “Sir—”

  “It’s Luke.”

  “Luke, most of our guests are sharing already.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Of course not.”

  I had no idea what to say. The idea of sharing a room with a complete stranger seemed almost as awkward as assuming there would be a vacancy in the first place.

  “Sorry I can’t help then. There’s water and some donated snacks in the lounge. Help yourself.”

  I thanked ChantŽ for her trouble and she looked at me like she thought I was pathetic, or at least that’s how I’ll remember it. She disappeared into the office behind the counter.

  The step-down lounge originally meant to hold breakfasts of free bagels, Danishes, yogurt, and Froot Loops was now filled with sleeping bags, cases of hand sanitizer, and bottled water. Some children played Candy Land at a banquet table. Others huddled on a couch watching Finding Nemo on the flat screen that usually ran CNN Headline News.

  Six or eight adults had pulled chairs away from other tables and gathered around a youngish-looking couple. The petite woman had cropped black hair and tired eyes. Her husband was a hulk of a man with a buzz cut and scruffy beard. Their somber tones captivated the audience. I wondered if the group had been sharing horror and survival tales all day.

  I approached.

  “It’s completely destroyed,” the husband told us. “You haven’t seen anything like it, I promise you that. Some of the buildings north of town are just ripped up, maybe fixable, but I doubt it. But everything south of the tracks is gone. Whole neighborhoods. Churches. Stores. All of it’s gone. It’s like God got mad and looked down at us and just erased us right off His map.”

  “Now, Sweetheart.” His wife wrapped herself around his thick arms. “God didn’t do this. He just let it happen. There’s always a reason.”

  Before her husband could answer, another man walked up and joined the conversation. “Where is that? Louisiana? What town?”

  “No, right here in Mississippi. Waveland, Mississippi. Buddy, you wouldn’t believe what’s happened down there. Wouldn’t believe it. Surge was over thirty feet.”

  “Thirty?”

  “That’s what they’re saying. Eye or eyewall or whatever came right over Waveland.”

  He shook his head and spoke more slowly. “Older folks couldn’t get out of the way. A lot of them killed. My guy that runs my auto shop—known him since we played D-line together in high school, my best friend really—he lost his daughter. Drown in her own house. Four years old.”

  The small crowd quieted even further.

  “That just isn’t right. That just isn’t what’s supposed to happen. Drown in her own house?”

  He spun a white plastic bottle cap on the tabletop.

  “Waveland’s the town I grew up in. Met my girl there.”

  “We’ve known each other since fourth grade,” his wife said, squeezing him again.

  “They’re saying Waveland lost fifty people. There aren’t but ten thousand people down in and ’round town. Tight group, you know?”

  The man rubbed his face with both of his giant, callused hands, applying so much anxious energy and pressure I could hear his skin squeak.

  “I just wish I could load you all up, take you down there, show you the other stories people aren’t talking about. Course I know New Orleans is bad off—real bad off—but, people, listen to me, there are tons of towns tore up. Waveland’s my home. We’ve lost it all. Shop’s in a pile, house is spread out all over the block, nothing left. Nothing but what we fit in the minivan.”

  His eyes welled up again. He wiped them with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  A short and sweetly-smiling Hispanic woman stood up and came to give the man a hug. He was almost on his knees when he met her to return the gesture.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  Others came and kindly offered support.

  “We’re here for you,” a woman said.

  “He just wiped us off the map,” the man repeated.

  “It’s OK, bud. We’re in this together,” said another.

  “Thanks, guys. Thank you.”

  I made eye contact with the man. I tried to smile through the pain in my chest and gut.

  I returned to the parking lot.

  I slept in the car.

  ~ ~

  I dreamt of the day Mom first realized she couldn’t live without the pills.

  Dad sat her down and told her how much he loved her. How much he believed in her. How long he’d stand by her. It amounted to a one-man intervention, and it was even less successful than Dad had hoped.

  Mom said no.

  Then she ushered him out the door on some needless errand and, after taking another of her naps, called me into the living room.

  “Sit down by me, my sweet boy.”

  “Everything OK, Mom?”

  “Yes, yes. All is well. Just sit with me for a minute or two. Your dad’s still out and about.”

  Mom’s voice wasn’t what it used to be. Once it sparkled and fizzed, like bubbles from my favorite soda. It used to make Dad and me smile just to hear it, even if we were two rooms apart from her. The exact words didn’t matter.

  Now it sounded like wet bread.

  “Luke, I’m not doing well. You know this.”

  “You need something, Mom? Another blanket?”

  “No, dear. I mean . . . I mean I’m not doing well at all. I’m not who I used to be.” She stroked my hand. “Am I?”

  “I know, Mom. You’re sick. You’re still grieving about Grandma. I know.”

  “Is that what your father told you?”

  “I guess.”

  “He’s right. I am sad. But I’m also tired and angry.”

  “At me?”

  “Of course not at you, sweetheart.”

&nb
sp; I wondered how many of her words were being generated by the pills. We sat quietly for a few minutes. I suspected she was editing her thoughts before they became words I wouldn’t understand anyway.

  “I need you to do me a favor, sweetheart.”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  “Live.”

  “I am living.”

  “Not like this. Live your life, son. Take your dad and be what you two want to be, what you were meant to be. Stop sitting around here bringing me blankets and V8s and cards from the school. Go live your life. You’re still a child, Luke. A child.”

  She was right. And this wasn’t the first or last time I felt trapped in a conversation ten years too early.

  “Your dad is a good man, Luke. But he’s stubborn. Talk to him. Go. Be happy. Let me be me. You go be you.”

  I began to cry. “But we love you, Mom. We want you to get better.”

  “I am getting better, don’t you see it?”

  No.

  “But it’s taking time. And I hate seeing you wait around for me, hoping I’ll jump up and get back to my life like it used to be before. I don’t want you to forget me, Luke. I just want you to get on with your life. Get back to the promise of your future.”

  I put my head on her chest and she ran her fingers through my hair.

  “You’re such a talented boy. Such a talented, talented boy.”

  We sat quietly again for a moment.

  “Mom, can I ask you something?”

  She was asleep.

  Later that night, while I sat in my room strumming my guitar, I heard Mom arguing with Dad in the living room. It ended in a familiar way.

  “We’re never leaving you,” he said.

  “Charles—”

  “I said we’re never leaving you. Never.”

  Chapter

  14

  My neck was kinked and killing me.

  My cell phone was ringing in the passenger’s seat and my eyes were adjusting to the light. The screen flashed Jordan’s name and cell phone number. I let it go to voice mail.