I took the prescription to a pharmacy in Little Rock, the one the doctor said he had the best relationship with. I thought I hit the jackpot, because the pharmacist was my age and seemed so normal. He was flirty, and I just dropped it off and practically ran, acting like I worked for the doctor and a patient needed whatever this was and didn’t the day turn out nice after being so gloomy this morning and I must be going.
A few days went by, and I hadn’t heard anything, so I went to see if it was in. I walked in, and the pharmacist was there with an older one. He turned to say something to the older guy. I put on my smile and kept walking toward them.
He stood there waiting for me to talk. “Good morning,” I said.
“I wasn’t supposed to fill that,” he told me. Gone was the cute smile. He glanced back at the older guy, who was stocking pillboxes like he was mad at them.
“Well, you did, so I guess it’s still back there,” I said, all smiles.
“I can’t . . .”
“Yes, you can. You ordered it. The doctor prescribed it. I can call him. Right now. He won’t be happy, but I can call him.”
He shook his head, willing me away.
I leaned in and said softly, “You can just give it to me and take my money.”
He looked past me. “Hi, ma’am, are you next?”
I turned. It was an older woman, who seemed confused about why she was suddenly next.
“I can’t find the eye drops,” she said slowly, eyeing me suspiciously, like I was here to run a bad check.
The young pharmacist leapt at the chance to get away from me. “Oh, of course, I’ll show you where they should be.”
The older pharmacist stared at me, contempt in his eyes. “I know what this drug is for,” he said.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re a pharmacist then, because you can help people with all that know-how.”
He walked toward me. “I don’t believe in all this stuff.”
“I don’t believe in AIDS either, but it’s here.”
He winced at the word and my volume.
“I don’t believe in that gay stuff.”
“You know, it’s a human body,” I said, trying to soften the moment. “It’s the same thing.”
“No,” he said coldly. “It’s not.” But he put the bottle in a little paper bag and threw it on the counter. I grabbed it to put in my purse before he changed his mind and reached for a pen to sign for it.
“You keep that pen,” he said when I was done. “And don’t come back.”
I put the pen in my purse. “Thank you,” I said.
Eventually I’d have a coffee can full of pens from pharmacists who kindly asked that I never come back. I had one pharmacist grab a big gold can of Lysol and spray it at me as I walked out. I refused to run away, and let it fall on me. It was winter, and I drove away with the windows down to try to air out the smell of Lysol. I pulled over where no one could see me, and I cried. Then I got back on the road to try another pharmacy.
By 1988, I was looking after more people than I could say grace over. It was still the network of calls from the hospitals and gay men giving out my number. Jim called to tell me Tim was at the hospital with another lung infection. They had him in isolation. “There’s this nurse running things . . .”
“I know the one,” I said. “The charge nurse.” She despised gay men and went out of her way to make sure they knew it. I could only imagine what she made of a free spirit like Tim.
“He’s real depressed,” Jim said, trailing off.
“I’ll go cheer him up,” I said. On the way over, I started to get mad, imagining ways the charge nurse was humiliating Tim. A lot of the nurses had let go of wearing the full space suit, I guess seeing that I kept going in and here I still was. But she never did. I’m sure she was the reason he was in isolation, too. I’d seen her be unnecessarily rough with people, usually when I’d sat so long with someone I’d become wallpaper to her. But I knew from patients that she was one of those “You did this to yourself” whisperers.
I passed a real hoopty Road Runner gas station, one of the dirtier ones in town, and I had an idea. Those men’s bathrooms often had vending machines for condoms, usually novelty ones. I knocked on the door before opening it, and sure enough, right there by the door was a coin-operated dispenser with French ticklers. They’re the jokey condoms with the spiky bulbs at the end, supposedly for “her” pleasure. Fifty cents later, I had a pink one. I put it right in my pocket.
When I got to the hospital, I waited until I was right outside his door to unfurl the French tickler and safety pin it to my blouse like a brooch. When I walked in, I got a puzzled smile out of Tim, and I knew the charge nurse was about to come in and scold me for not wearing the paper gown and slippers. Sure enough, she came tearing in, yelling at me.
“Does a condom prevent infection?” I asked, still facing Tim. We smiled at each other.
“That’s what they say,” she said.
I turned to show her my brooch. “Well, I’m wearing one.”
She stared at me, confused, then embarrassed. Tim laughed, which infuriated her. She looked past me to talk to him. “You are a danger to everyone on this floor,” she said.
“No, he is not,” I said. “My wearing a condom does just as much good as wearing all that god-awful stuff.”
She turned on her heels and stormed out.
“Well, that was fabulous,” said Tim.
“Wasn’t it though?” I said, pulling a chair over from the corner. “Now, you and I know I am a lady, Tim. So all of that was for you.”
“I appreciate it,” he said. He looked sad. “I want to be home.”
“I know,” I said. “This is a bump in the road. You’ve got more road left and more bumps too. We’ll get you out of here.”
I meant it and wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it. We chatted for an hour, when a smaller nurse came to the door, decked out in the space suit. She pushed a tray on wheels with a needle and vial. Her eyes widened when she saw me.
“You must be new,” I said kindly. She was terrified.
“The doctor wants a blood sample,” she said. “For the CBCs.”
“That’s to count your white blood cells,” I told Tim. “That’s good. Nice to know.” I turned to her. “So, you gotta stick him?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice shaking. She was probably the only one willing to go in because she was too new to say no.
She prepped him, making a big show of finding a vein, even though you could see Tim’s from space. It was the first time I really looked at the skin on his arm, and I could see the light scars of track marks.
Her hands shook, and she stabbed at him once, then withdrew in panic. Tim winced and she looked like she might pass out. She tried again, and she just couldn’t do it. Tim had had enough.
“Just give me the damn needle,” he said. She was confused but willing to do anything to get out of this. In small fluid motions, Tim rewrapped the tourniquet with his teeth and right hand, shoved the blood needle in his left arm, and pulled the draw. I put the cotton on as he withdrew.
“Honey,” he said to me, “I’m going to have to teach you how to do this. These girls aren’t ever gonna get it.”
The nurse sat in the chair, slumped to a point that I thought she had fainted, but she hadn’t. “You did great,” I told her. “Sometimes you just have to know when to get out of the way.”
I sat with Tim after she left. I had an idea.
“Will you really teach me how to draw blood?”
“Oh sure, Ruthie,” he said. “I have to.”
“I am just thinking,” I said, the notion still formulating in my head. “A lot of the guys who come to me didn’t get tested until they were sick.”
“Like me,” he said.
“Like you. But if you tested earlier, mayb
e before you were sick, you could maybe have gotten in front of it.”
“Yeah, but who was I gonna ask for an AIDS test that wasn’t gonna kill me or put me on a list?”
“Exactly,” I said. “But if I did the testing . . .”
“That’d be a different story.”
“And we need a different story than the one we’ve got.”
We made the plan right there: I would start testing people who wanted to know. There was no such thing as an HIV testing kit—it was just a glass blood needle, a tourniquet, and a vial. Then they’d bring the vial to the Arkansas Department of Health in Little Rock. I could do that.
I was in and out of enough ERs and doctors’ offices that I could get supplies. The nurses turned a blind eye. Any time they made me and my guys wait, I’d just rifle through the drawers and put all kinds of stuff in my purse. Needles, cotton balls, bandages . . . Go in with a five-pound bag and come out with it weighing fifty.
When Tim was home and well enough, we started our lessons right in the living room. Jim had the radio on, singing lightly along with Reba McEntire, wondering what in the world she was going to do about some man.
I had seen blood drawn many times, but I was so scared to hurt him. Tim had no time for it. “Honey, give me that handkerchief,” he said, and tied himself off. “Look, this is how you do it.”
He did it in what he thought was slow motion for me, but he could do it twenty times in a minute, he was so used to shooting up. “Okay,” he said. “Your turn.” I aimed at his vein.
“No, you go in like you’re landing an airplane,” he said, “not like a helicopter. Catch the vein, that’s it.”
I did it, filling a glass vial, and finally exhaled. “I’m not a phlebotomist,” I said, “but I play one on TV.”
Tim’s mother volunteered to be my next guinea pig with a new needle, and again Tim coached me through it. “It’s gonna be gin,” he said under his breath, but she laughed. I wanted a “control” so I knew it worked when we got the results back. Hers was likely negative, and his would be positive. Then I’d know it worked.
I had a Styrofoam cooler—a little minnow bucket I used for fishing—and put the labeled samples in there with some ice.
“Wish me luck,” I said. Off I drove to the Arkansas state health department, which I had seen but never been in. It’s an imposing fortress with a long row of about a dozen steps out front, so you know the people there come down from on high.
I generally don’t do front doors, because they’re easier for people to close on you. So I drove around to see if there was another way in. Down an incline in the back, they had a loading dock, with more vans and pickups parked around it than the fancy cars in front.
“Here we go,” I said. I got out, adjusted the shoulder pads of my white blazer, and marched up to the back of the building. Next to an overflowing dumpster was a ramp that led to a door. I walked up and went through it like I owned the place.
There were two guys, each of whom seemed more than a little surprised to see me.
“Good afternoon, I’m Ruth Coker Burks, and I think I am all turned around. How do I get to the drop-off for blood samples?” I hid my minnow bucket behind me.
“Uh, you want to go this way,” one of the guys said, pointing down a passageway, “then left. The public health lab.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And what is your name?”
“Earl.”
“Earl, thank you so much.”
I went toward the intake desk. A woman in her fifties looked up from reading a magazine. We exchanged smiles. “I love your nails,” I said. If you have a hard time finding a compliment to give someone, go for the nails.
“Oh, thank you,” she said. She looked down at them, like they were prized possessions.
“I have two blood samples that need to be tested for HIV.”
“Ewww,” she said. There went that smile.
“You don’t have to fall in love with it, just get it where it needs to go.”
“Okay,” she said, stepping back from her disgust. Maybe she wondered if I was someone important. She seemed surprised at the bucket.
“There’s two,” I said.
“Do you have the test request forms?”
“Shoot,” I said.
“Here,” she said, handing me two.
They wanted names. “It’s anonymous testing, right?”
“Right.”
“Good, because I am not sure I got their real names,” I said, writing down “Ronald Reagan” and “Nancy Reagan.”
She eyed the forms suspiciously but gave me a number to call. “End of day tomorrow,” she said.
“Perfect, thank you.” I walked to the back, and thanked Earl again. “Are you gonna get out on the water this weekend, Earl?” I asked, now waving the minnow bucket.
“You bet.”
“Well, good luck to you.”
I got the call that Ronald Reagan had tested positive for HIV, and Nancy Reagan had tested negative. It worked. Now we could get in front of this thing.
I started to think about the rules of the game changing. But then the game got turned upside down.
Chapter Eight
I knew there was trouble when I saw the crowd outside the resort, but I couldn’t have guessed how much.
We were locked out; there were chains on the gate. Sandy was already there, cursing up a storm. “It’s been seized,” she said.
“The feds?” I asked.
“Well, somebody with locks. It’s done.”
The way I came to understand it, the resort was financed by a savings and loan that fell. Right on our heads. What I did know for sure was that the resort owed me about thirty-five thousand dollars in commissions that I was counting on for the rest of the year. And that vanished.
“What are we gonna do?” asked Sandy. Allison was at school, and I had this feeling like I needed to fix this before I picked her up. I saw our life falling away, and I needed a plan.
“Sandy, there’s about six more weeks to the racing season, and that’s probably the only place hiring right now,” I said. “We need to get over to Oaklawn.” Oaklawn Park was the racetrack, still the big draw to Hot Springs back then, but the horse races were only in town from January until April.
Sandy made a face. The people in town were raised to call people who worked at Oaklawn “racetrackers,” which was as good as saying “trash.” These locals and church people, they didn’t mind going and betting, but they didn’t talk to any of racetrackers. I remember when kids used to come to school because they’d moved here with their families for racing season; they’d get stuff thrown at them all the time.
“Well, I’m going,” I said. I drove right there, realizing over and over how much trouble Allison and I were in. Her daddy certainly wasn’t going to suddenly start paying child support. And my guys. Gas to get to Little Rock, food . . .
I stopped behind a little yellow Chevette signaling to make a left into the racetrack. They had to pass two lanes of oncoming traffic on Central to get there.
“Just edge into it,” I said aloud. A tourist bus was behind me, and the driver leaned on the horn. “How’s that gonna help?” I asked.
The car wasn’t budging, and traffic wasn’t relenting. The bus honked again. I got out of the car, closing the door lightly. I signaled to the bus driver with one finger that said “Hold on,” and then I walked up to the car. It was a little black lady, and she was terrified.
“Let me ask you this,” I said. “If I stop all this traffic, will you go?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but ya can’t do that.”
“We’re gonna do this,” I said. There was no median, so I was right in the middle of the road. I held up my hand to the first lane. A car whizzed by. The car behind him slowed, and I took a step into the lane, basically forcing him to come to a full sto
p. I did that lane by lane, standing in the center of Central Avenue. I directed her to turn. The bus started beeping in short bursts, and I waved to him to make the turn. I knew he had a schedule.
I looked at the faces in the two cars, and put my hand to my heart in a sincere thank-you. I ran to my car, assuming they’d start up again, but they waited, even with cars behind them honking up a storm. Sometimes you have to hang a lot on small mercies.
I got a job selling tickets at the track, but that wasn’t going to last. I was pretty, so I got a lot of people coming to my window. After a week they put me in the private club, where the good tips were. “Maybe you’ll find a husband,” the manager said when he told me they were moving me. I smiled but thought, What do I need a gambler for a husband for?
But that would be only through April. And I had all my guys to feed. Even with half of Bonnie’s food stamps, I couldn’t afford to keep this going.
I began to go to some of the elders of the town for help for my guys. I had impressed a lot of them while working with the church finance committee, coming up with fundraising ideas and always knowing who in the church might want to make a larger pledge that year to clear their conscience over some affair or business deal. I never ratted on anyone, I was just observant and kept a mental list.
Many of the elders just knew me as my father’s daughter. I was a toddler when my daddy would let me tag along to sit as the menfolk talked on the porch at the house of Raymond Clinton, a powerful figure in Arkansas politics. He helped lead the GI movement that got veterans to run for all the offices in Hot Springs and Garland County. Raymond owned the Buick dealership, and if you wanted anything done in Hot Springs, you had to go through him and get his blessing. In the evenings, all these veterans would meet at Raymond’s house out on Lake Hamilton. It was kind of a hideout. My daddy was twenty years older than the other men on average, and as they figured what it meant to be a veteran, they looked up to him, as someone who had been in both World War I and World War II.
All the Young Men Page 9
