She Rode a Harley

by Mary Jane Black

  We slide off our helmets as he shuts off the welder. I drink my now cold coffee. He points out all of the work he has gotten done this morning. There is a Harley switch on the dashboard for the starter. He laughs about how surprised everyone will be by that. He grabs my hand. “We’re going to take the rat rod for a spin by our fifteenth anniversary in June.”

  I nod and ask him if he wants breakfast.

  He shakes his head no. He hasn’t eaten for several days. He lives on protein shakes now

  He follows me when I step back into the house. He takes his medicine, and I eat toast and drink more coffee.

  Then I hand him my birthday card. He opens it to find my gift. I bought him a helicopter ride over the city of Austin. He told Stephanie and me at the Air and Space Museum about his wanting to build a helicopter like the ones he rode during Vietnam. This is as close as I can get him to that dream.

  He lays the printed page with the helicopter ride coupon on it on the table. He smooths it with one hand. I stare at the cuts and scratches on his hand from his last fall in the bathroom. The clock in the kitchen ticks loudly in the background. We sit without speaking.

  Dwayne rubs his thumb rhythmically over the paper, smudging the ink onto his skin. “Thank you for remembering how much I wanted to fly in a helicopter again. I remember telling you and Steph that day in the Smithsonian.” He takes my hand. “Do you think I am going to be able to do it?”

  “I’ll be right there with you.”

  He naps most of the day. His brother and our daughters call him to wish him a happy birthday. We drag lawn chairs out into the driveway in the middle of the afternoon. He raises his pale face to the weak March sun and lets it warm him. Across the arms of the chairs, I lay my hand on his. Neighbors leave their houses to talk to us. Some of them I don’t even recognize, but Dwayne chats with them about their families and their jobs.

  The sun sets in a blaze of red against a turquoise sky. We stack the chairs in the garage. Another day has slid away from me. He will go to bed early after the painkillers kick in.

  I tuck the soft, worn blanket neatly behind the couch cushions when I transform it into a hospital bed. I fluff the pillow and lean it against one armrest. I clutch a quilt in one hand. I will tuck him in when he lies down. We don’t talk about it, but he has moved out of our bedroom.

  Dwayne leans on his walker by me. He softly sings along with the Louis Prima song blasting from the CD player. “Jump and Jive” fills the air. He taps one foot to the beat in his black corduroy house slipper. He reaches out one shuddering hand toward me.

  I take his hand and sway with the music. We match our movements in a small dance without moving our feet. I lean over the walker and kiss his bony cheek. He smiles at me. Then I back away, and he rolls next to the couch. I grab both of his hands and brace myself. He lowers himself down on the soft makeshift bed with a groan.

  I push the walker away with my foot while I snap the quilt in the air. I fold it under and around his bony body. He wiggles under it until he is comfortable.

  He settles into the pillow. “Can I have the heater too?” He can never get warm now.

  I flip it on and move it closer to the couch. I plop down on the floor by him and lean against his arm.

  He strokes my hair with a flow of words. “Hey, do you remember that time your scooter broke down in Vegas? We had just got to the hotel, and the damn thing quit in the parking lot.” The story floats in the dim light of the living room.

  I rub my cheek against the skin of his arm. I close my eyes and feel the blast of the Nevada sun. I feel the grease-slicked wrench in my hand as I remove my Harley’s rear wheel.

  Louis and Keeley Smith harmonize in the background, singing about strangers finding each other in the night.

  LETTING GO

  As I pull into the driveway two months after his birthday, Dwayne’s sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of the garage. He has folded a thick navy blanket as a cushion over the hard metal frame. A small colorful quilt wraps around his shoulders. His walker with the red-and-yellow flame stickers waits by him. He clutches a small notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other. Stacks of tools surround him.

  I step out of the car. I reach down and hug him tightly. “Are you working on something new to do to the hot rod?”

  Dwayne moves stiffly away from me, one quivering hand holding his chest. He braces his feet against the concrete floor to push himself upright.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He looks up at me. He reaches out his hand and grabs mine. “Don’t argue with me.” He clutches the arms of the chair with whitened knuckles.

  I lean against the workbench, waiting for him to speak.

  “Baby, I’m putting together an inventory of the garage. All of my tools and how much they’re worth.” He stops. He pushes back his thin, graying hair. “I don’t want you to have do this.” He pauses and adds, “After I’m gone.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” My voice rises with anger. I clench my eyes shut and push back the tears.

  Dwayne struggles to pull himself up from the chair. Without a word, I step forward and steady him as he rises. “I gotta do this for you. I don’t want you to have to deal with selling them. It wouldn’t be safe for you to have strange men coming into the garage and me not here.” He snaps shut the notebook.

  I interrupt him. I tell him it will be months before we even have to think about it. He lays one trembling finger against my lips.

  I blink back tears. “I don’t think I can deal with this now.”

  He moves my stiff body closer to him and pulls me against his chest. I can feel his ribs through his sweatshirt. In the middle of the cold garage, we stand together.

  Finally, he breaks our hold. I follow him as he slowly walks back to the bedroom where we’ve put his hospital bed. He sinks down on the side of the bed. I sit down by him. The hard plastic mattress flattens beneath us. I lay my head on his shoulder. He leans sideways and lays his head on mine. We sit in silence. Above us, the ceiling fan clicks.

  Eventually, I stand up. I swing his legs around and up on the bed. He leans back against the raised head of the bed. He closes his eyes. The bones in his face stand out in the glow of the lamp. I wait until I hear his breath deepen as he falls asleep. I stand and watch him for a moment. Then I shower and get ready for bed. I tuck my cell phone under the edge of my pillow. The alarm will go off in three hours. I will give him his second pain medication of the night.

  The next morning the hospice nurse arrives early for our first visit. Dwayne sits propped on the couch. He clutches a cup of coffee in both hands. Barely healed cuts and scratches cover his hands and arms. He falls more now, and he bleeds easily.

  The nurse strides briskly by me when I open the door. Her wiry gray hair swirls from under her colorful scarf. She wears a navy-blue shirt tucked into her jeans. She clutches a cracked brown leather briefcase in one hand. She stretches out the other one to Dwayne to shake his hand. “I’m Pam.”

  She straightens up and swivels toward me. She drops the briefcase on the floor. She takes my hand. She covers it with her other hand. Her short petite body stands straight at attention like a soldier during inspection. “You must be Dwayne’s wife.”

  I nod stiffly and shift away from her steady gaze. She lays a hand on my arm to stop my movement. “You know he can be in hospice care for months. This doesn’t mean it’s the end of his fight.”

  I move away from her and sit on a chair across the room.

  She sits in the chair by the couch and pops open her briefcase, pulling out a handful of papers. She and Dwayne lean forward to face each other. I perch on the edge of a small ottoman across the room. I sit tensely, leaning forward on my elbows, and watch the two of them talk. She nods energetically now and then.

  Finally, Dwayne stands up. Pam hugs him. He shuffles over to his walker. We listen to his soft footsteps and the squeak of the wheels as he goes back to bed. She turns to me, and she
picks up the briefcase. This time she pulls out a small plastic bag filled with bottles and syringes.

  She marches across the room to stand in front of me. “It’s your end-of-life kit.” She holds it out to me. I get out of the chair and push her hand away. She drops it, still holding the bag.

  My breath catches in my throat. My heart pounds. My vision blurs. I drop to the floor with a thump. Pam kneels by me. She gently pushes my head down on my knees. Her other hand rests firmly on my back. “Breathe. Slowly. Slowly. Breathe.” Behind my tightly closed eyes lights dance.

  In time, I stand up. She sticks out the plastic bag again without speaking this time. I reach out and grab it. I clasp it against my chest, feeling the hard edges of the bottles and boxes.

  We move to sit down at the kitchen table. She explains how to use the liquid morphine and medicine in the bag. “You’ll know he’s in a more advanced stage when he’s not aware of you or where he is. Then you’ll need to use the liquid morphine.”

  She soon leaves. I stumble outside and sit at the patio table in the sunshine. I watch birds dip across a blue sky. For the first time, I notice the green grass and leafy trees of a day in May. I didn’t realize spring had arrived.

  Behind me, I hear the French door glide open. Dwayne steps outside without the walker. He walks slowly and deliberately to the table and slumps into a chair next to me.

  “How’re you doin’, baby?”

  “I am pissed off, but I don’t know who I’m mad at.” I stop for a deep breath. “And I’m scared as hell.”

  He reaches out and lays a hand on my shoulder.

  “I just want our life back.” I slap the palm of my hand against the glass tabletop. It rattles beneath the blow.

  Dwayne reaches down and grabs a handful of small rocks from the flower bed by the patio. Wordlessly he hands one to me. I fling it at the wooden fence. It bounces off with a thump. He hands me another one. I heave it through the air. It shotguns into a bird house. The house tumbles to the ground.

  Rhythmically we continue. Pass the rock. Hurl it through the air. Thuds of objects hit. Some rocks sail over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Curses fill the air along with the rocks. Soon my arm and my throat ache.

  I drop my face onto my arm on the table; my body shakes with my sobs.

  Dwayne clenches his hands into fists. “I fucking hate this too. I don’t want to leave you or Stephanie or Jessica.” He hunches over the table. His thin shoulders tremble.

  I raise my head and look at him. I lay my hand on his arm. He raises his head, and we stare into each other’s eyes. I wipe away his tears with the sleeve of my sweater.

  I pass him the last rock I still grip in my hand. He picks it up. We look at each other through our wet eyes. He pulls his arm back. He flinches with the pain. Then he slings it across the patio. It doesn’t go far. It skids across the concrete and falls into the green grass.

  We lace our fingers together. Time ticks by. Another day ends.

  Two days later on a cloudy Saturday morning, Roger and his wife Emma arrive in a dusty black truck. He hooks up our trailer to the back of it. I help Dwayne to his lawn chair. I tuck his quilt around his legs. I stand behind him with my hands on his shoulders. We watch them load the tools into the back of the truck, and he pushes Dwayne’s last hot rod truck onto the trailer. Dwayne talks about where he bought some of the tools and what he built with them, and he tells Roger to tell him when he sells the truck.

  At one point Roger reaches up on a shelf and clicks off the radio. I tell him Dwayne always leaves it on, even when he’s gone. “That radio has been playing for almost fifteen years now. The only time it was off was during moves. Then he’d turn it on as soon as we arrived.”

  Dwayne reaches up and takes my hand. “It’s okay, baby. I won’t be working in here anymore.”

  The four of us avoid looking at each other after his announcement. Finally, I turn and leave the garage. No one speaks when I open the door and turn my back on them. I hide in the bedroom for the next hour. I sit on the bed and stare out the window. I hear the thump and clang of the tools leaving the garage as they are loaded.

  Eventually, Emma sticks her head through the open bedroom door. She tells me they’re getting ready to leave. I follow her out to the garage. Dwayne now leans on the cleared workbench. Roger reaches across it and takes his hand. Dwayne tells him he loves him.

  Roger chokes out, “I love you too, buddy.” Their joined hands stretch across the scarred wood. Rogers breaks the hold first. He turns on his heel and walks silently to his truck.

  Emma hugs me before she joins him. “You call us if you need anything.”

  Dwayne and I stand side by side and watch them drive away. The loaded truck and trailer bump over the potholes and coarse asphalt. I push the remote button and close the door. We go in the house. I perform our nightly ritual. Medicine. Helping him dress for bed. Watching until he falls asleep.

  At midnight I creep quietly into the dark garage. I pull the door silently shut behind me. I flip on the light switch. The fluorescent lights flicker on. I stare at the emptied space. A stack of car magazines and mechanics’ manuals leans in one corner. His radio still sits silently on an empty shelf.

  One crumpled glove lies discarded on the floor. I reach down and pick it up. I press it against my cheek. I smell the gas and oil. The smell of Dwayne working. I kneel down and sit with a lurch on the cold concrete. I press my back against the wall. I rock back and forth. Minutes or hours pass. The alarm on the phone in my pocket beeps. Time for Dwayne’s medicine. I turn it off.

  I stand up with a creaking back. Rubbing the stained leather, I lay the glove on the shelf by the radio. Quiet surrounds me.

  GNARLY GIRL

  I’m on a Sunday drive with Dwayne when we see the gnarly tree for the first time. In the past, we’d always ride our Harleys on Sundays. Today we are meandering down a rutted gravel road near the small town in Texas where he grew up. He suddenly puts a hand on my shoulder. “Look at that tree, baby!”

  He thrusts his hand across me and points at a large oak tree with his index finger. His gaunt face is animated with excitement. Seventeen months of chemotherapy have left him thin and bent, and his face has shrunken to reveal the skull beneath the skin. In this moment of discovery, I see the first sign of joy I’ve seen in him in several weeks.

  I study the enormous twisted oak tree, standing majestically in the middle of the fence. The dark bark has split as it stretches around the bulges and knobs of the tree. Its branches point their clawed fingers toward the impossibly blue Texas sky.

  “It’s a tree from a fairy tale. A wizard’s tree,” Dwayne announces. He sighs and leans his head back against the back of the seat. He takes my hand. “That tree has a part in the history of this place. It has a story. It makes me proud to be a Texan.”

  I turn off the car. We stare at the tree.

  As we sit there in the sunshine, we point out all of the images we see in the tree. Dwayne is sure he sees a bearded face, and I see the outline of a gnome. He moves to open the door to go touch the tree. I look involuntarily at the walker behind the seat.

  His eyes fill with tears. We both know he will not be strong enough to roll himself over the rough gravel of the road to get to the tree. He softly releases the door handle.

  In the weeks that follow our finding the tree, I forget about it. I’m busy with each day’s schedule of medicine and doctors.

  Dwayne has not forgotten the tree.

  One Saturday his cousins Sandra, Gwen, and Janice visit us. We’re eating lunch when Dwayne stops our storytelling and laughter to announce, “Mary and I saw the gnarliest tree on the river road in Cameron!”

  The three women look at me. Gnarly is an unusual word for Dwayne—not a word in his Texas biker’s vocabulary. He describes exactly where they could find the tree. At his request, I quickly find him a pencil and paper. He sketches the tree for them. The drawing has stopped with the cancer. Now the magical tree comes to life und
er his pencil. He illustrates every snaking branch and misshapen part of the tree. They promise to go by the tree on the way home and take pictures for us.

  The email with pictures arrives later that night. He sits transfixed in front of the computer screen. He names it the Gnarly Tree. He tells me all four of us are now the Gnarly Girls. I lean across his thin shoulders and listen to his elaborate plan for the spring ritual with chimes and pinwheels at the Gnarly Tree we will perform soon. He wants me to play guitar music on a CD player.

  Four weeks slip away in a flood of bad news. One evening the hospice nurse and I step out of the bedroom in our house where Dwayne lies in the hospital bed. I had to call her after giving him the liquid morphine. Forcing his lips apart, I dropped the medicine into his mouth. He doesn’t recognize me when I talk to him.

  Now, after talking about what’s next for him, we walk back into the room. The nurse puts her hand on my shoulder. “He’s not breathing.”

  “Neither am I,” I whisper. I sit on the bed in the stream of light from the hall, with my hand on his stilled hand, until they come to take him away.

  A numb month passes. One Saturday morning my daughter Stephanie and I wake early. She has come for a visit because we are taking Dwayne’s ashes to the Gnarly Tree. I carefully place the bronze urn in the back seat. I wrap his Harley leather jacket around it. I want to make sure it remains upright in the seat.

  We drive the eighty miles to the tree in silence. The tree appears before us as we turn a corner on the twisting, dusty road. Its dark green leaves rustle gently in the breeze. I stop the car in the grass and gravel at the edge of the road. We get out of the car and stand for a moment with our faces turned up to the sun. I reach into the back seat and pull out the urn. I hold it to my chest for a few minutes.

  I walk and stand by the tree. Stephanie follows me. She stands by my right side and hugs me to her with one arm. “Thank you, Dwayne, for all you gave me. I can’t imagine where my life would have gone without you.” My choked words hang in the silence.