All the Young Men

by Ruth Coker Burks

  Allison’s teacher talked a little about the curriculum, and I was impressed. I was glad she was here, even if Imogene thought nuns were zealots. I hadn’t even told her that Allison and her classmates went to Mass every morning. Allison even had a little prayer book, and when she and I buried someone in the cemetery, she would sometimes read from it. I definitely wasn’t telling Imogene that.

  The open house went longer than I expected, but Allison’s daddy never showed, no matter how many times she looked at the door. We got in the car to drive Imogene home, and we were all quiet. When we got to her house, I had no illusion we’d be invited in. I wanted to ask Imogene if she could ask Allison’s daddy why he couldn’t do even the one thing I asked him to do.

  “I wonder why Maggie’s here?” she said. Maggie was Allison’s daddy’s new wife. The fourth one. She had a nice car, of course, and there it was parked outside Imogene’s house. Yeah, I wonder why that bitch is here? I thought, but just shrugged. Imogene went in the house, and I drove off. While I was in the area, I stopped at one of my guys’ apartments, just to make sure he was doing okay. They’d given us a packet of Allison’s drawings at school, and he made a big deal about admiring them.

  The Doctor had given me a bunch of pill organizers he got from some pharmaceutical rep pushing blood pressure medicine or something. As Allison explained her drawings, I divided up doses for the week. Whether it was a side effect of the AZT or an early sign of some kind of dementia, it was sometimes hard for my guys to keep track of their pills and whether they had taken them. This was such a simple way to be useful, and I found the divvying up to be like a meditation.

  When I got home, the message button was flashing on my answering machine. I was tired and hoped one of my guys hadn’t left a distress call. I pressed play and walked away.

  It was Imogene.

  Allison’s daddy was dead in a car crash. I turned to shut off the message to spare Allison, but Imogene spoke so fast I couldn’t. Allison stood there, a look of shock on her face, like she was replaying what she’d heard to make sense of it. She looked at me, waiting for me to explain how she had misunderstood. Waiting to hear from me that I would fix it and her father was fine. I couldn’t.

  He’d been driving out where the interstate turns to Highway 70, right where I’d seen that little thunderstorm. While I had watched from high on the hill, cursing him, Allison’s daddy was lying dead in the rain, his car smashed against a bridge abutment at the bottom of a steep curve. Two women were working at a dairy bar right there at the bottom of the hill, and they saw it all.

  They said he was speeding and passed a car against the line. When he tried to get back in, he swerved on the road, slick from rain after a dry spell. His car went spinning, turning again and again, gathering momentum until it crashed. One woman stayed to call the police, another ran to the car. She said he had slid to the passenger side, dead, but not a mark on him. In the seat as if he were waiting for the driver to come back.

  Despite all the death I’d seen I couldn’t come up with words to comfort Allison. The morning after we got the news, I called Dr. Hays, the head of our church, to tell him what happened. Allison really liked Dr. Hays, and I thought he could offer some solace. He’d been cold to me since I asked for the room for the support group but still polite. I made a point of waiting in line to shake his hand on Sundays because I knew it made him uncomfortable.

  He said he was sorry to hear that. I asked if he would please come to the house to talk to Allison. He paused too long. “Yes, I can.”

  Dr. Hays drove up just before noon. I was waiting and opened the door to greet him. I could tell he was never in this neighborhood, even though the church secretary lived right by me. He walked gingerly, like the very ground might soil his shoes.

  “Thank you for coming, Dr. Hays,” I said. “Please come in.”

  “I think it’s best if I stay on the porch,” he said. “Is Allison—”

  “You won’t come in?”

  “I cannot,” he said quickly, glancing around. He looked anywhere but at my face.

  “Why not?” I willed him to look at me. He did.

  “You are a single woman, and it would not look right for me to come in to your house.”

  “The Persistent Widow,” I said. Luke has Jesus talking about her in his Gospel. The widow who won’t give up until she gets justice from a corrupt judge. She goes to him for help against her “adversaries,” and it’s never clear if she is talking about other people or something else that plagues her. I knew what I had wanted help with. I was still deeply hurt that Dr. Hays wouldn’t even give my guys a place to talk to each other.

  “You’re not a quite a widow,” he said.

  “No, not quite,” I said, smiling with no teeth so I wouldn’t roll my eyes. “But I am persistent.” I turned and called to Allison.

  They talked on the porch while I waited inside. I couldn’t stand to listen to him. I stood at the sink, holding the edges to steady myself. I had no idea how I was going to do this. I hated Allison’s daddy, but he’d been a good parent. A better parent than me sometimes. I had no idea how I was going to do this alone and still take care of people.

  When Dr. Hays left, we drove to Maggie’s house, just so Allison could be with family. On the way over, Allison said she wanted one of her daddy’s shirts. A long-sleeved button-down she pictured him in. “That’s very nice,” I said, swallowing a little hiccup of emotion. When my daddy died, I would wrap the sleeves of his shirt around me too.

  We got to Allison’s daddy’s house, and I reminded myself to be nice. I don’t think even Maggie liked him, and she was still married to him. I rang the bell and fixed a look on my face of compassion. Maggie was not as good an actress. Her face fell when she opened the door.

  “Ruth?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Allison wanted to be with her family.”

  Maggie didn’t look down at her. “This isn’t a good time.”

  Past her shoulder, I could see his ex-wife Linda was inside with their son.

  “I can, uh, I don’t need to stay—” I took a step back, placing Allison at the forefront. Maggie didn’t budge.

  I mouthed, “Really?” and Maggie shook her head. I leaned in to speak softly but directly. “She would like one of his shirts.”

  Maggie looked aghast, like we were there to ransack the place. For a shirt. “Oh,” she nearly spit, “it’s just like you to have to come in and try to take something you want so soon.”

  I looked down, intent on keeping Allison from being further hurt. “Well, we just wanted to pay a call on you, Maggie,” I said, only for Allison to hear.

  Allison wanted me to take her to the florist. I had asked Terry Wallace, an announcer at the racetrack who had money, if I could borrow a hundred dollars for Allison to have a dress for the funeral and to buy flowers. First I had asked Imogene to help out, and she’d said no. So I was forced to ask someone who was basically a stranger to me. But he was a nice man, and I knew he wouldn’t tell me no.

  Allison was insistent that she choose the flowers for his funeral herself, and we stopped at home to pick up an angel candlestick she’d recently painted at school. She had a vision, and I had a need for her to have a win. When I parked, she turned to me as I unbuckled my seat belt.

  “You can stay in the car, Mama.”

  “I’d like to help.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I will help by staying in the car. Yes. That is what I will do.”

  She was in there so long that I thought maybe they were waiting for me to come in and pay. So I snuck in softly. One of the people who ran the shop, Suzann, had come from behind the counter. They were crying.

  Suzann saw me, and I nodded, putting my finger to my lips. “I want it to be special,” I heard Allison say. My six-year-old had prayed over so many people as we buried them together that I lo
st count. She understood the importance of a funeral, the ritual, the sacred meaning of being put to rest. I had a hunch where Allison’s daddy’s soul was going to end up, but I had to keep my mouth shut about that and just be there for her while she sent him off.

  At the service, they wouldn’t let us sit with the immediate family. His own six-year-old daughter. Her flower arrangement with the angel candle was indeed lovely, and I asked the funeral director if he could bring a little stepladder over or something so Allison could see her father in the casket.

  “Well, can’t somebody just pick her up?” he asked.

  “No, she needs a moment alone with her father.”

  “Well, I will have to ask the family.”

  “She’s his daughter,” I said. “Isn’t that family enough?”

  Maggie said yes, but I got the sense we had crashed the funeral. Allison’s daddy would be buried in Memorial Gardens, where my mother had exiled her brother for eternity so long ago. That seemed fitting. Allison wasn’t allowed in the family limo over to Memorial Gardens. I understood me not being welcome, but not his daughter. Allison had a rose that she had quietly plucked from the casket spray, one she had studied all the way from the funeral home to the grave site. She had put all of her energy and love into it, and now she wanted to put it inside the casket quickly before everyone else got to the grave. The funeral director was put out and brushed us aside, again saying he would have to ask the family. I took him by the lapel and dragged him to the limo Maggie and Linda had just arrived in, sitting side by side. I ripped open the car door.

  “Maggie, tell him that it’s okay to open the casket so his six-year-old daughter can see her daddy one last time.”

  “Well, I guess.”

  Allison never got that shirt. They gave her a paperweight. Just a little globe with some plastic that meant nothing to him or them. But she put it in her room where she could see it. Allison’s daddy told me he had a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy payable to his daughter. You know where that story went.

  He left us destitute. Because Allison’s daddy had been married four times, I had to fight to get social security for Allison. It dragged on and on, and we were already out the money he was behind on child support. Bonnie helped watch Allison while I worked, but I was so stressed I went down to a size four. Bonnie didn’t say much about it. If Bonnie didn’t have a solution, she wasn’t going to offer advice.

  I was home one morning when there was a small but insistent knock on the door. It was Imogene, standing on my front porch, scowling. She was wearing a camel-hair coat that was expensive at one time, but that time had come and gone. She had her arms holding each shoulder, acting as if she was either so cold or so offended to even have to be at my home.

  “Your friend told me you need help,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The sick one.”

  I laughed to myself. “Well, you’ll have to be more specific.”

  “Bonnie,” she said, as if she hated admitting she knew anything about me. She handed me a wad of cash. “Here. That’s the best I can do. And don’t ask again.”

  I waited until she was gone to look at the amount. Two hundred dollars. Money to go away, I guess. Well, I paid the rent and then took a tiny piece of that money, two dollars, to buy a flat of eggs at a hatchery. And I put it in the passenger side and drove over to Memorial Gardens.

  Before I could think about what I was doing, I brought the eggs right over to his grave. “You sonuvabitch,” I said, throwing a fastball egg right at the stone, aiming for his dumb name. “You sorry sonuvabitch. You left us all alone. Your child and her mother. Your useless parents won’t see us.”

  I grabbed another and another, tears running down my face as I lobbed them right down. “Two hundred dollars.” The yellow muck piled up on his grave. “One month’s rent. One.”

  It was just a few hours before dark, and this would be a buffet for the coons and other varmints that would come out to feast on his grave.

  Then the cops pulled up. I wouldn’t even look at them. Just kept throwing egg fastballs. As an officer slowly approached, I said, “What do you want?”

  “You’re upsetting a lot of folks over here.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that, but I’ve got some business I’ve got to attend to.”

  “It’s not nice to throw eggs at graves.”

  “It’s not nice for ex-husbands to leave their child penniless.” I grabbed another, punctuating it with a “Destitute!” I grabbed two more. “It’s not nice”—slam—“to have your child living on”—slam—“nothing.”

  “I’m taking those eggs,” he said.

  “That’s just gonna waste your time,” I said, finally turning to look at him. “Because I’m just gonna get more. And you’ll just have to come back here.”

  He swallowed.

  “Because,” I continued, “there is something I have to let my ex-husband know.”

  He paused. “I get it,” he said. “Just keep it down.” As he walked away, he called out. “You’re just lucky it’s gonna rain.”

  “I guess I am,” I said, picking up two more eggs. “So damn lucky.”

  Tim and Jim were giddy in the elevator. We were closed in tight because the elevator was a small one, beige with wood paneling. Tim danced like that was what would power it to the eleventh floor.

  “I tried to get you the penthouse,” I said, “but it’s the one below.” Jim was doing his “we’ll see” act, but I could tell he was excited too. It was a big thing for these country boys to move uptown. Housing assistance set them up with a large studio in the Mountain View Heights building, right by the national park. It was a high-rise by the standards of Hot Springs, where even being in an elevator was a big deal.

  When we got off the elevator, I walked them through the building as if I was their realtor, listing off the amenities. “I love this open walkway,” I said, pointing out to Hot Springs Mountain and the park. The leaves were just started to fade to red and orange. “That’s about the best view there is. The other side has a view too, but this is the one to have to see what’s going on.” Jim grabbed Tim’s hand and squeezed it, real quick, but I saw it. If this was back at the resort, I knew I’d have a sale.

  An older black woman walked by us. “New blood,” I told her, making a point to stop her to introduce them. If they were gonna be here, they were gonna be here, so the neighbors needed to meet them. This was government housing, mostly seniors. She shook their hands, and we continued on to the apartment.

  I held out the key. “Who’s doing the honors?”

  Tim put his hands to his face in excitement, and just as Jim went to take the key, Tim squealed and grabbed it to put it in the lock. They ran in, and Tim started exclaiming. “Oh, honey,” he said to me. “Oh, honey. It’s just so beautiful.”

  “Here’s your kitchen,” I said, waving to the left, “and the bathroom there.” There was a large partition wall, making a front room with space for a big couch and a place for a bed on the other side. “There’s that view again,” I said, pointing to the picture window.

  I led them to the back where the bed would go. “Here are all your closets, and on this side, you have a view of North Mountain.”

  Jim nodded at Tim. “You happy?” he asked.

  “I am,” he said.

  “You’re uptown now,” I said.

  They moved in quick, not having much. I drove them around in Bonnie’s pickup, finding them things here and there. I’d gotten used to slowing down at dumpsters. We got a nice glass-top coffee table for the front room, just gorgeous, and a love seat we found on the side of Highway 70, like someone hadn’t tied it down and just left it when they hit a bump and it flew off.

  One of their favorite parts about the new place was the proximity to the trail up the mountain. By then I understood that they were not monogamous, and tho
ugh that wouldn’t have worked for me, it worked for them. They understood the risk and used protection, and the rest was none of my business, except for keeping them supplied with the condoms I started collecting from the health department. It wasn’t a shock to me that men had sex in the park; the surprise was the joy with which Tim and Jim spoke about it. The foreplay of walking by someone and looking back. Leaning on one tree, looking at someone doing the same. The subtleties of signaling that you are friendly, joining in like a dance. I wanted to know about how things happened, so I could better understand how to talk to people about navigating risk and pleasure.

  “Do you all go at night?” I asked.

  “Twilight,” Jim said.

  “Guys getting off work, heading home,” Tim said. “And also in the morning. That’s when the executives who have the wives and children can say they’re going in early for a meeting. It’s tougher to swing that at dinnertime.”

  “A quick stop,” I said.

  “A quick stop,” said Jim.

  Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is about waiting for something big to happen. A bunch of weary souls hanging on for a reason to feel the thrill of hope in winter. So it was funny that I finally got social security that first week. I had spent the summer digging in boxes in records rooms and warehouses, trying to piece together the employment history of Allison’s daddy. He’d had and lost so many jobs that I couldn’t keep up, and Maggie and Imogene wouldn’t help me at all. They said I was just greedy, trying to make money off their husband and son. But there was a man, Marc Bergup, who worked the window of the press box at Oaklawn Park. His nine-to-five job was at the social security office, and he offered to help me when he found out what we were going through. He got me a partial check that first month, and without it, I don’t know what I would have done.

  It would be enough that I didn’t have to work a full-time job. I could quit the sawmill, and Allison and I would be okay.

  They lit candles at First United on the four Sundays of Advent, each candle symbolizing a different longing: faith, hope, joy, and peace. Allison wanted to be an acolyte and have a turn lighting the candle. Kids did it with their parents, and we’d never been asked. She was having a hard time dealing with her daddy’s death, so I asked Dr. Hays right away.