Desert Blues

by Bill Albert

  After a while she got up and went into the bathroom. Her mascara had run. She took a tissue and cleaned her face, blew her nose.

  She walked out to the living room, sat down and turned on the TV. Jack Baily’s round, mustached faced filled the screen. His hair was slick and plastered down. He was smiling. Queen for a Day. She hated the program, but couldn’t not watch. It was hypnotically compelling, like an elaborately ritual execution.

  “And, Mrs. Thomas, will you tell the studio audience why you want to be Queen for a Day!”

  Mrs. Thomas had some story to tell. Was there really that much pain in the world? By the time she finished, Mrs. Thomas was in tears and so was Enid.

  She knew she would have to call Archie soon and tell him her new story. It was going to be difficult to explain everything to him over the phone. Her stomach went queasy when she tried to imagine the conversation.

  “It’s my husband, Mr. Baily, he hasn’t been very well these last few years. He hasn’t been able to work regular like. And we have five children. Helen, she’s the youngest . . .”

  “Yes, Mrs. Botham. And exactly what has been the matter with Mr. Botham?”

  She would also have to have a serious talk with Harold. Her sister had been very anxious about Harold’s lack of progress at high school. Would he be alright at the local high school? She didn’t know anything about schools. She would have to find out about that. And then of course, there was Archie. Always back to Archie. She was not only going to have to explain Harold to Archie, she was going to have to explain Archie to Harold.

  “And candidate number five, who wants a new stove.”

  Wild applause sent the needle on the applause-meter swinging all the way over to the left. No washing machine for Mrs. Thomas. Tough luck.

  Enid reached over and turned off the set. The picture imploded softly, fading to a small white dot in the center of the screen.

  “Hey partner, you still alive down there?”

  Harold opened his eyes. It was a few seconds before he could focus. A face shaded by a cowboy hat, peered down at him. He remembered the snakeman in the drug store, thought for a moment he must still be in the drug store. He wasn’t. He was lying on his back in the sand. A few feet away was a horse, its long neck stretched out, mouth moving along the ground by the side of an adobe wall searching for something to eat. It was very quiet except for the swishing whisper of the horse’s browsing lips and the loud buzzing of flies. One landed near his nose. He reached up and brushed it away. He couldn’t understand why the horse was there or exactly why he was there or even where “there” was. The last thing he remembered clearly was Aunt Enid’s straw hat and Pat Boone’s singing “Tutti Frutti.”

  “Where you live at?”

  Harold sat up. He was dizzy, sick to his stomach, and his face was burning hot.

  “Shit! Oh shit,” he moaned.

  “You don’t look so good. Gotta get you outta the sun. Come on, let me help you up.”

  Two strong arms lifted him onto his feet. He felt unsteady and held on to the boy’s arm.

  The boy was about Harold’s age, maybe a little older. Tall and thin. Cowboy boots, Levis, silver belt buckle, checked Western shirt with triangle flap pockets and mother-of-pearl buttons, and, of course, a cowboy hat.

  “Looking for a record shop. Everything was closed. Couldn’t even see in the damn windows . . . Fucking Pat Boone!”

  The boy laughed.

  “Yeah, he ain’t much to write home about, is he. For sure he ain’t no Hank Williams.”

  The boy paused, kicked at the sand with the toe of his boot.

  “Yeah poor ol’ Hank Williams.”

  Harold nodded. Yes, he thought, poor old Hank Williams. He had never heard of Hank Williams. He began to giggle. Poor old Hank Williams.

  The boy looked at Harold with concern. He shook his head.

  “You are sure one sunblasted son-of-a-bitch. I gotta git you home. Where is it you live at, cowboy?”

  “Poor old Hank Williams,” muttered Harold to himself. “Poor old Hank Williams.”

  “Come on now, where is it you live at?”

  Harold smiled at his new friend.

  “Abelstein, Harold Abelstein.”

  “Ha! That right?”

  “Abelstein,” Harold repeated slow and deliberate, “Harold Abelstein.”

  “I got you. So, Harold Abelstein, what the Sam Hill am I going to do with you?”

  He thought a minute and then led Harold over to the horse.

  “Can you ride?”

  Harold stared uncomprehendingly at the horse and then at the boy.

  “Yeah, I suppose not. Can you walk?”

  Harold managed a nod.

  “Right, come on I’ll take you back to the stables. It ain’t far. You can wait there out of the sun ‘til your brains unscramble.”

  They started down the road, Harold leaning heavily on the boy.

  “You ain’t no lightweight, are you, Harold Abelstein?”

  About a hundred yards down the road a woman in a bikini came running out of a house. It was Aunt Enid. She had been getting a drink in the kitchen, staring out the window when she saw the two boys and the horse.

  As she rushed at them the horse shied, pulling powerfully on the reins. To keep control of the horse, the boy had to let go of Harold. Unsupported he staggered toward his aunt. His face was bright red. His eyes were half closed.

  “Harold? Harold darling! What’s the matter, Harold? What’s happened to you? Oh my God! . . . Where’s your hat?”

  “I found him just up there is all,” said the boy, staring at Enid’s breasts while pointing back up the road.

  Harold grinned stupidly at his aunt.

  “Poor old Hank Williams,” he said, as he fell forward.

  Enid tried to grab him but he was much too heavy for her. He collapsed through her arms and landed in an untidy pile at her feet.

  Enid looked down at her nephew. This is my fault, she said to herself. I nagged him about going out, so he went out and now look what’s happened. Maybe I wanted it to happen so as to punish him for being here. No, I couldn’t want that, could I?

  She pulled the straps of her bikini higher up on her shoulders.

  Harold was too heavy to carry. They had to drag him. The heels of his shoes left two very deep tracks in the gravel at the front of Enid’s house. It couldn’t be helped.

  Sort of Telling It Like It Is

  “We must have a talk, Harold darling.”

  He was watching television. It was his one sure way out of Palm Springs. Harold would settle for just about anything: Father Knows Best, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, although he had to draw the line at Oh Suzanna. Gale Storm made him puke.

  “Please, Harold, just a few minutes.”

  Reluctantly he looked away from the television. Enid reached over and turned off the sound. She sat down in a chair next to Harold.

  It was two days since his sunstroke. The blisters and strips of peeling skin made it look a lot worse, but the swelling had gone down and his face didn’t hurt so much any more.

  “How are you feeling, dear?”

  She reached over and patted his knee. He shifted uneasily, still half watching the flickering screen, trying to figure out what was being said. Why did she have to bother him now?

  “OK, thanks. I’m OK.”

  “That’s good, darling. Harold, please . . . Please, dear, pay attention. We haven’t really talked about things since the funeral. You can watch that later.”

  How could she say that? He knew there was no way he could watch it later. It would be finished later and he would never know what happened. He sighed and turned to face his aunt.

  “That’s better, darling. Thank you. I know things have been difficult, Harold. I know that. But, we must have a little heart to
heart about the future. OK? . . . Harold?”

  He stared down between his feet.

  “The last time I talked to Sylvia, to your mother, she said you were having a lot of trouble at school. Is that right, dear?”

  “Not really trouble,” he answered, continuing to study the floor.

  “I see.”

  Enid knew that getting through to Harold was going to be hard work. But, she felt she had at least to try for her sister’s sake. Maybe for her own as well. If she tried harder with Harold it might make her feel less guilty about the uncharitable thoughts she had about him.

  “And what are you without a college diploma these days?” Sylvia had asked her sister, bemoaning Harold’s latest disaster at school.

  “A nobody?”

  “A nobody. Right, a nobody. At least we agree about something, Enid.”

  Neither of the Cohen girls had had much of an education. First Sylvia, then Enid had to leave high school to support their mother. Their father had disappeared in 1933. He left their house in the Bronx one morning saying he was going to look for work. He didn’t come back. They’d never heard from him.

  “Please, Harold, we must talk to each other. Talk honestly. Your mother said she was worried that you were doing so badly in school. Were you getting bad report cards or something?”

  A chill settled in his stomach. Report cards. He had almost succeeded in forgetting about report cards, about school. Somehow he had assumed that all that had been obliterated by the accident, together with his parents and his life in Los Angeles. When Aunt Enid mentioned report cards, he realized that he hadn’t thought it out very well. Like lots of other things in his life, he hadn’t wanted to think about it. He still didn’t.

  “What do you call this, Harold? What?”

  His mother stood by the table in the dining room glaring down at him, holding his latest report card out in front of her as if it was a quarantine notice.

  “My report card?”

  “Don’t be such a wise guy, Harold. I know it’s your report card. But, look at what it says. Look at these grades, if you can call them grades. Ds. All Ds. In Math a D. In English a D. In History . . .”

  “OK, Mom! OK!”

  “What do you mean, OK? OK? It’s anything but OK, young man . . . In History a D. In Spanish a D. In . . .”

  “I’m sure Harold gets the message, dear.”

  “Message, Norman? Exactly what message are we talking about here?”

  “You know what I mean, Sylvia. Come on.”

  She ignored her husband and turned back to Harold.

  “In Spanish a D. A . . .”

  “Mom, you already said that.”

  “Harold! In Geography a D. In PE a D. How did you manage that? PE a D!”

  “I don’t like to do gym is all.”

  “And, I suppose you don’t like to do English, or History, or Spanish, or any of the other subjects? Is that it? This is worse than last time. I remember a couple of Cs last time. Harold?”

  “Sylvia, this isn’t getting us anywhere. You’re just getting yourself upset.”

  “You want to handle this, Norman? Do you? As I remember it, you were going to have a man-to-man talk with him after the last report card. So what happened? . . . Well?”

  “It’s not that easy . . .”

  “Bubkas is what happened. Absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s getting worse.”

  “He has some problems, Sylvia. We . . .”

  “I’ll say he has some problems, but nothing compared to the problems he’s going to have if he doesn’t start to work harder. What do you think you’re going to do in life without a college diploma? Without a high school diploma, for Christ sake! Harold? Huh? Look at your father. If he had had the opportunity to go to college . . .”

  “Sylvia, for God sake!”

  “It’s not true, Norman? It wouldn’t have been easier?”

  “Sure, maybe it would, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Harold.”

  “Well, if it doesn’t, I don’t know what does.”

  She slammed the yellow card down on the table, leaned forward until her face was inches from her son’s.

  “So, what are you going to do? What?”

  Harold didn’t have an answer. He hadn’t thought about it.

  School had always been there, and Harold had always found it hard going. Most of the time he just wasn’t interested. He figured that school was one of those things adults did to children. It had to be put up with. So, Harold put up with it. Despite what it might seem like, he knew it couldn’t last forever.

  “Harold?”

  “Yes, Aunt Enid.”

  “Report cards, Harold? Bad report cards?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Harold, help me out here just a little, will you? OK, OK, look, you don’t like school, right?”

  Harold nodded.

  “Fine. Why don’t you like school?”

  His mother had never asked him that. He thought about it.

  “I don’t know, it’s just, you know, sort of boring like. And, um we do this stuff, and it’s, you know . . .”

  “Boring?”

  “Yeah.”

  Enid was struggling through heavy mud.

  Harold’s eyes began to slip back toward the television. He tried to read the actors’ lips, but they were too far away from the camera.

  “Listen, darling. Please listen. How would it be if I sent you to a nice private school here in Palm Springs?”

  As soon as she said it, she realized she hadn’t thought it through. For too long she had been around women at the club who didn’t have to worry about money. But, how was she going to afford it? She didn’t even know how much it cost. If only his parents had left something for Harold. They hadn’t. For some reason, Norman had apparently never got around to taking out a life insurance policy. There was only what she could get for their furniture, a few hundred dollars. It wouldn’t go far. She would have to ask Archie. That wasn’t a pleasant prospect. Not only was he going to be asked to share his house with Harold, he was going to be asked to support him.

  “Huh?” Harold grunted in surprise.

  For the first time he looked directly at his aunt.

  “That’s better, dear. Now listen. A couple of the girls at the club send their children to a school near here called Date Grove. They have small classes, lots of individual attention. It would be nice for you, Harold darling, it really would. What do you think?”

  He didn’t see what difference it would make, school was school.

  “Sure, Aunt Enid, that’d be OK, but what about the money? Doesn’t something like that cost a lot?”

  At one point his parents had been so desperate that they thought of sending Harold to a military school. But it was much too expensive. Harold was glad that his parents didn’t have the money. The last thing he wanted to do was go to a military school.

  “It could be a problem, darling, but I think we could find the money. I’ve got a friend who I’m sure would help us.”

  She wasn’t at all sure. He might help them both into the street.

  “Oh, well that’s fine then,” said Harold turning his attention back to the television.

  There was a commercial for used cars. A man wearing a checked coat was pointing to the price sticker on a ‘56 Thunderbird.

  The heart to heart was over. Enid reached over and turned up the volume.

  “Low down payments, twenty-four easy monthly payments. Come on down tomorrow, folks. We’re at the corner of Central and the Slauson. We’re open seven days a week.”

  “Goodnight, Harold.”

  His eyes remained fixed to the screen. After being forced to trek across the desert he was not going leave the oasis now.

  “Yeah . . . goodnight, Aunt Enid.”

  Enid
opened the drawer of the bedside table to look for a new emery board. The one she was using was almost smooth. The pack of Salems lay there waiting for her. She pushed them to one side and picked out the emery board. She began to shape her nails. Tomorrow she would put on a new coat of nail polish. A new color—Midnight Red. She thought she might even do her toes if there was time. Maybe go out and play a few holes of golf later in the afternoon, when it was cooler. Then she remembered what month it was and that none of her club friends would be there. They all had husbands or other homes to go to when the summer closed in. They had flown north. She would call Charlene.

  There were muffled voices from the living room. Harold was still watching. TV and records. Since his abortive journey into town that was about it for Harold. More so than before. And, of course, there was eating. The kid could eat. When she had been on her own, Enid ate out most of the time. Now she was having to go to the supermarket and do the cooking. She didn’t mind it as much as she thought she would. It was a change and she found she actually enjoyed cooking, even for Harold. He wasn’t picky. He ate everything she put in front of him, most of the time without looking up from the plate.

  On the whole, however, Harold was not a joy to be with. She had to admit that. Getting two words out of him was a struggle and when they came out they were painfully inarticulate. But, she knew she would have to be patient. It was, after all, only two weeks since the accident. He’d been with her for ten days. It would take time for him to adjust, time for them to adjust to each other. And, she was his only blood relation. For that matter, he was her only blood relation, her entire family. There had to be some mileage in that. She tried to think about exactly how much.

  The toilet flushed. The heavy tread of footsteps, a door being closed. She counted the seconds. Eight, nine, ten . . . Then the music started. It was as if something terrible would happen if he had a noiseless moment. Were all kids like this? She didn’t know. Kids had always been for other people. Crying, smelly, and demanding when they were little, in the way when they got older. She’d never wanted any of her own and here she was with Harold. She laughed. A real prize package.