Desert Blues

by Bill Albert

  “I bet you never even listened to the Grand Ole Opry.”

  “Um . . . not really,” Harold replied uneasily, rubbing his scorched arm.

  “City boy,” laughed Garf.

  Harold’s recent success at Pioneertown seemed to be fading fast.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Aunt Enid, hands on hips, stood in front of the house. Harold had never seen her so angry. It was worse than the night by the pool. Now the anger was clearly directed at him. More echoes of his mother.

  Gingerly, he climbed down from the pickup. The insides of his thighs ached and the burn on his arm was stinging. He knew that behind him Earl and Garf were listening and watching.

  “I’ve been worried sick about you, Harold,” his aunt scolded “Do you know what time it is? Do you? I was just about to call the police.”

  Even his mother had never gone that far.

  “You take care now, Harold,” called Earl from the pickup. “And watch out for Big Jim.”

  Harold turned around. Both boys were grinning broadly at him. He felt humiliated and completely alone. Head hanging, he followed his aunt into the house. He heard Earl’s pickup accelerate down the road.

  When they got inside she began to shout at him once more.

  “You must never, I repeat never do that again, Harold! Never go off without telling me . . . You can’t imagine how I . . .”

  Then throwing her arms around him she began to weep. She hugged him tightly.

  “I’m so happy Harold . . . You’ve come . . . so worried.”

  Harold stood there, his arms dangling at his sides, not knowing what to do. Yelling he could handle. For him being yelled at was normal and he had had lots of practice ignoring it. Crying and hugging were altogether different, especially from Aunt Enid. There was no way to ignore, no room to ignore. He felt her breasts squishing against his chest, felt the tears soaking through his shirt. He was mortified by the physical intimacy, terrified by the tears. After a minute or two she let go and stepped back.

  “I’m sorry, Harold darling, but I’ve had a very, very bad day. And when I didn’t find you this morning I thought . . . Well, it doesn’t matter now. You’re home. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”

  Then she noticed the hat he was wearing.

  “Why Harold,” she laughed, “what have you done to my hat?”

  “Uh . . . I didn’t. It was Earl, Garf really. You see he, that is they, thought that . . .”

  Harold’s voice trailed off. Mystified, Enid watched her nephew fading away in front of her.

  It’s just like the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Harold thought dreamily. “Well,” demanded the king again, “do you or do you not take off your hat before your king?” When he was a little kid it had been his favorite story. Every night he asked his parents to read it to him. Every night they argued about whose turn it was to read to him. Finally they bought a recording of the book. Four shiny black 78s. Much better than his parents, he had decided. There were trumpets and different voices, the sounds of a carriage racing over cobbled streets, of the axeman’s axe hitting the execution block and best of all, he didn’t have to rely on his parents. He could listen to the story any time and as many times as he wanted. He wondered whatever happened to those records.

  “Are you alright, darling?” asked Enid, approaching him and gently touching his arm.

  The contact brought him out of his reverie and back to where he was. More importantly, it brought him back to where his aunt was, which was much too close.

  “Sure, yes, Aunt Enid. Fine,” he said, sliding around her and making for the sanctuary of his room.

  “Harold, please dear, we must talk right this minute. Something very serious has come up.”

  She had been too busy to worry about how to tell Harold that his room was now occupied by her dying father. She looked at him and hesitated. Eyes averted, shoulders slumped, patches of blistered skin still marking his face, her nephew stood solidly in front of her. He reeked of horses.

  “Can we sit down, Harold?”

  They sat down. She reached across the table and took his hand. It was soft, moist and ungiving. Just like Harold, she thought sadly.

  Not that it was any easier to deal with, but he was getting used to bad news. He stared down at his feet waiting for the latest installment. After she told him whatever it was at least then he would be able to get away from her and bury himself in the controllable certainty of his records.

  She told him.

  They had washed him, but the smell of urine still hung in the air.

  “You’re a good boy, Harold. A very good boy.”

  Abe Cohen was lying in bed covered with a thin blanket, but Harold couldn’t erase the picture of the old man’s naked body from his mind.

  “I don’t care what the doctor says,” Aunt Enid had said, “I’m not having him in here smelling like this. But I can’t do it by myself, Harold. You will simply have to help me. OK?”

  They had earned carried him, half comatose, into the bathroom and set him down on the floor near the bathtub. He slumped there, eyes closed, arms and legs limp, moaning softly.

  “You hold him upright,” Enid said, “and I’ll try to get these clothes off him.”

  The stench coming from the old man was stomach turning. Harold imagined he could detect the smell of decaying flesh under the stronger smells of piss and BO. His stomach heaved, threatening to bring up his lunch. He fought to keep it down.

  “I don’t know about this, Aunt Enid,” Harold said faintly. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Harold,” she said sternly, “I don’t feel so great either and he feels a lot worse. I’m depending on you now. Please!”

  She bent over and began unbuttoning her father’s shirt. Sweat beaded her forehead and ran down the side of her face. She was inches away from him and Harold couldn’t stop himself staring down the front of her halter top. Every few seconds the dark corner of a nipple would be exposed as her breasts moved back and forth. Despite the awful smell drifting off his grandfather, he started to get an erection. It all made him very light-headed.

  “Don’t let him slip!”

  Startled by her shout, he pulled his eyes away from her breasts and held his grandfather more firmly. By then she had removed his shirt and was starting on his pants. Harold tried not to look at the body that was emerging. He couldn’t help himself.

  Chest, arms, and legs were emaciated: sharp bones wrapped in translucent parchment. The stomach hung from between the hips like a bloated sack. The skin over the entire body was mottled and covered in a dusty white rash. The pubic hair had disappeared almost entirely, cruelly exposing the penis and testicles, purplish-brown and shrunken to the size of a child’s.

  Harold was revolted by the sight and by the feel of the body. It was brittle and lifeless. If he squeezed too hard the bones would snap and a thin colorless fluid would ooze onto the floor.

  A caricature of a person, a bad joke. Does this happen to everyone, he wondered, unable to take his eyes off his grandfather’s withered genitals. Will it happen to me? His erection had long since evaporated. He knew beyond certainty that he would never have another one.

  His grandfather flickered awake when they lowered him into the water.

  “Where . . . Enid? What are you doing?”

  He made a feeble effort to resist.

  “It’s alright, Dad, it’s alright,” said Enid softly, as if she was calming a baby, “Just relax, you’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

  All turned around, thought Harold. Could he have done this for his father? It didn’t seem possible. How could Aunt Enid do it? Especially since she seemed to hate him so much. Yet there she had been, on her knees, bathing her father. He didn’t understand.

  From the bed Abe’s cocked finger now reeled in Harold’s reluct
ant attention.

  “How old are you, Harold?”

  “Sixteen. I told you that before.”

  “Right, you did. I’m sorry, of course, sixteen years old. A good age to be. Better than sixty-five. You hear what I’m saying? A lot better.”

  Abe paused and gazed at the walls, as if seeing them for the first time.

  “You like roses?”

  Harold smiled.

  “Not much.”

  “Never did like them myself,” said Abe. “Don’t know why. And here I am stuck in a room full of roses. It’s a funny life. A funny life. Now daisies, daisies are a different story. I’ve always liked daisies.”

  Eyes turned inward, he began to hum.

  “You know that one, Harold?”

  Harold shook his head.

  In a soft and slightly off-key voice Abe sang, “Day-z, Day-z, give me your answer do. I’m half cray-z all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage, but you’d look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.”

  “My mother . . .” Abe said, rubbing his eyes.

  His head fell back on the pillow, and his eyes closed. Thinking the old man had dozed off again, Harold got up from the bed. Abe’s voice caught him before he got halfway across the room.

  “You like the fights, Harold?”

  He didn’t wait for a reply.

  “How about that Sugar Ray? Huh? Stopping Fulmer in the fifth with that left hook. So sweet. Bang! Right on the chin. Never knew what hit him. On his way back to Utah. A puncher and a mover. Thirty-six years old, Harold. Thirty-six years old and still the best. You hear what I’m saying? Still the best. But, this Patterson guy, I can’t see him lasting, can you? Too small for a real heavyweight and he doesn’t box right. Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo. What is that? More like chick-en-shit. You hear what I’m saying? You watch what Hurricane Jackson does to him in the rematch.”

  Harold didn’t know a thing about boxing. His mother hadn’t allowed his father watch the fights on their television.

  “I got better things to do than watch a couple of poor shvartzes beating each other to death. And so do you, Norman. Besides I don’t want Harold watching such things.”

  “I’m going out, Sylvia.”

  “That’s right, you go to Murry’s. Go on. Watch the fight, have some drinks with the boys. You’re pathetic, Norman! You hear me? Pathetic!”

  He could still hear the door slam.

  “What about those Dodgers and Giants, Harold?” Abe asked, trying another tack to get the boy’s attention. “What do you think about that, huh?”

  “Oh, they’re OK, I guess.”

  “You guess? But, what about them coming out here to the West Coast? Really something isn’t it? I don’t see how it’s going to work, though. The nearest team, the Cardinals, two thousand miles away in St. Louis. Two thousand miles. And in New York they’re going nuts. Can you imagine Brooklyn without the Dodgers? Without Ebbet’s Field, for God sake? Can you? No, it’ll never work. You hear what I’m saying? Never work.”

  Once, after a lot of pleading, his father had taken him to Gilmore Field to see the Angels play. But all the time they were there he was talking the game down. His father was from the East, a Dodgers fan.

  “Sure Bilko can hit homers here. Anyone can in a little rinky-dink park like this, Harold. Look at that play, will you! Bush league stuff. Not the real thing. Not the majors. You see a Duke Snider here? Or a Sandy Amoros? A Don Drysdale? Of course you don’t.”

  It was the only sporting event he had ever been to with his father. They never went to another one. At the time it hadn’t seemed so important.

  “She’s a good woman, your aunt. Hey, you listening to me?”

  Harold hadn’t been.

  “Sure,” he said, “Aunt Enid.”

  “Yeah, a good woman at heart. Taking me in like this. Taking you in for that matter.”

  That was just what Harold did not want to hear. The old man and he were separate, not a package deal. He remembered the look on Aunt Enid’s face that night by the pool. His grandfather’s being there had already messed things up for him. Aunt Enid was preoccupied and nervy and he had lost his room. The one place, despite the roses, where he had felt comfortable. All his records and his record player were now in the garage, his clothes in the closet by the front door, and a stranger was dying in his bed.

  Maybe he could go down to the stables tomorrow. He would tell Aunt Enid this time. It would be OK if Garf wasn’t there, if he could just be with Earl. Maybe he’d let him ride again.

  “You know how she makes a living, your aunt? I mean, what is it, Wednesday? Tuesday? What?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday, right. And, she hasn’t gone to work, has she? And, she’s not married. So?”

  “So?”

  “So, where does she get her money?”

  He knew. Of course he did. She had told him about the man from St. Louis. But he was not going to tell his grandfather. It wasn’t any of his business and, besides, he didn’t want him to know too much about Aunt Enid. That would put them on a more even footing. Also, he felt somehow that he should protect his aunt from her father. Harold had seen the pain on her face and the tears when she was bathing him. He didn’t want her to be vulnerable like that. It made him feel insecure.

  “She’s got a nice house here. A nice car. Nice furniture. It all grew from a tree, did it?”

  “I dunno,” Harold replied.

  “So what was I supposed to do? I ask you. What? I didn’t want to die there among strangers.”

  “You could have at least told me when you arrived,” Enid said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  He is my father. He is dying.

  She repeated the litany to herself. Over and over.

  “I should have said? Maybe. OK. Maybe I should have. I’m sorry. It’s just that, you know it’s hard. Hard to say that to someone. ‘Hello, I’m your father and I’m dying.’ You hear what I’m saying, Enid?”

  In spite of herself, she smiled.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “How about, ‘Loud and clear, Dad’? I’m a non-person? I don’t have a name all of a sudden?”

  One moment of weakness when he was lying helpless in the bath. A sudden rush of pity and there he was at her with guilt. She didn’t answer.

  “OK. I understand. Sure, why not? Don’t worry about it though . . . It’s just that with such little time left it would have been nice. But I shouldn’t expect. I know I shouldn’t expect.”

  He is my father. He is dying.

  “Who’s Daddy’s little girl? Daddy’s sweetness?”

  Sitting on his lap, strong arms holding her close. Dark furniture, a framed oval mirror on the opposite wall, outside the metal lattice of the fire escape, the dull rumble from the street five floors below. White lace doilies on the back of the couch, on the arms of the overstuffed chairs. Tobacco and frying onions. Her mother calling out from the kitchen.

  Resting on the white pillow his head seemed much smaller, as if it were there all by itself, not connected to the blanket-hidden body.

  “I have so much to tell you,” Abe said, straining to sit up, “but I feel so damn tired . . . It’s funny, you know, dying that is. At first, when they told me in Los Angeles about the kidneys, I didn’t feel anything. The truth, I didn’t.”

  He held up his right hand as if he were taking an oath.

  “Nothing. I didn’t believe. I mean really believe it. Later when I did I was scared. Frozen stiff scared. You know what I thought about? A million years and you wouldn’t guess. No? I could only think about all the time I’d spent, so much time, sixty-five years, dressing, washing myself, brushing my teeth, having my hair cut, cleaning my ears, all those things I’d done to my body.”

  He gave a short la
ugh and then started to cough. The blanket shook and rippled. It took him a few minutes to recover.

  “And what did it all amount to? Cleaning, washing, brushing. What? Nothing. In the end a big round nothing.”

  He wiped his eyes, then lay back staring at the ceiling. His voice became dreamy. The words seemed to float out of his mouth.

  “Sometimes I think of that little kid. What was his name? You know the one who fell down that well in New York somewhere. Benny. That’s it Benny, Benny Hooper. Remember that? No? They gave him up for dead. Down there twenty-four hours, last rites and everything. Then at the last minute, the walls are collapsing on top of him and they pull him out. Just like that. Pulled and pop, out he came. Yeah, little Benny Hooper. Makes you think. Huh?”

  “Sure,” she replied flatly, “it makes you think.”

  She was thinking, but not about Benny Hooper. She was thinking how she had resigned herself to his being there. To his dying there. About how she would go through the motions. Do the right thing. There was nothing else she could do.

  Archie? The day after tomorrow, he would step off the plane. Her father might be dead by then. He did seem to be a lot weaker than when he first arrived. She tried to push the thought away. It wouldn’t go. She wanted him dead and out of her house, out of her life.

  And if not? If he was still hanging on? Surely Archie wouldn’t just throw me out into the road, she thought? A dying father and an orphaned nephew. I couldn’t like a man who would do that, could I? But, who knows. When the chips are down, they’re down. Down to his privacy gone, his desert hideaway overrun. Archie Blatt’s woman, his woman no longer. Now Harold Abelstein’s aunt, Abe Cohen’s daughter.

  Archie always made such a lot of noise in bed. How was he going to feel with the old man right across the hall listening and Harold asleep or watching TV in the living room? Not good. Not good at all.

  He would be very civil about it, very understanding. Maybe even sympathetic. She was sure of that. No yelling, no immediate drastic moves, but when he got back home he would see things differently. What do I need this for, he would ask himself? For this kind of tsouris I could stay in St. Louis, she could hear him say.