L. Ray rolls in, his guitar across his lap, a yellow legal pad resting on top of the guitar, and stations himself beside Carl’s chair. “I’ve got a little sermon written out,” he says.
At about 7:20, Aunt Lil, Mrs. Satterwhite, and Mrs. Cochran, pushing their walkers, find their way to seats. They are dressed up. A few minutes later, Carrie removes two chairs from the half circle, and into that space she rolls Mrs. Talbert, dressed in her blue housecoat. Several others wander in at about 7:25.
At 7:35, L. Ray says to Carl, “Let’s start in with just the music.”
“Wildwood Flower,” instrumental version, for a nursing home audience, it seems to Carl, is wildly received. Everyone applauds briefly. Clara Cochran says, “Yahoo!”
It seems to be a good shoe night to Mrs. Talbert. She wonders where her friend is—the one who sits on the other side of the front door and has started talking some about the preacher man.
“We’re happy to be here, ladies,” says L. Ray. “I’ve got me a new sidekick to help out on the music tonight, Carl Turnage, and before we get to a brief message, we’d like to do a couple more songs. That was a song many of you may recognize, ‘Wildwood Flower.’ Next up is a little ditty that my sidekick, Carl, and I put together after being inspired by Mrs. Jenny Osborne.”
There are a couple of snickers.
“So let’s have a hand for Mrs. Osborne.” L. Ray points to the rear of the room.
Mrs. Osborne had rolled her wheelchair in during “Wildwood Flower” and parked it against the back wall. She hears the applause and sees heads turn to look at her, but she doesn’t know why. She is thinking. She tried to stand in therapy earlier in the day and failed, and she’s wondering if she should try again tomorrow, or if they will let her wait a day or two. She wonders where the next place she’ll go will be.
“It’s ‘Ain’t Got No Problems.’ A one and a two and a . . . “ L. Ray starts in with a Travis pick on a C chord. Carl joins in on bass.
I got thrown in jail last summer,
Beat up by a jailhouse mob. . . .
Carl follows along on the printed tablature, aware that this is his song, his words. He feels he is inside a dream that has nibbled at him for ten years at least.
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” comes next, with Carl singing a tentative tenor on the chorus. They finish, and as the applause spatters out, Carl stands, rests the guitar in its stand, and starts for an empty seat. There, out in the hall, stands Anna, smiling at him. He turns his back to her and sits down, feeling a trickle of sweat run down his side. Where did she come from? What did she think of all this?
“I’d like to deliver a brief message,” L. Ray says to his audience, moving to get comfortable in his wheelchair, his bad leg extended. He raises his hand. “I feel the Spirit upon me. And I must tell you at the outset here that Mrs. Olive and Mrs. Cochran in conversations on the porch have provided me with an idea that I think is truly revolutionary. We can please Jesus, and please every religion’s leader who ever lived, by working to accomplish one single task: making churches and nursing homes interchangeable. It’s that simple.”
Somebody sneezes.
Carl glances over his shoulder. She is gone. He looks back at L. Ray.
L. Ray tilts his head back and, glancing now and then at his legal pad, starts softly, almost as if praying.
“I have changed. My life is renewed, reborn, in a fit of unexplained crying after I almost got eat up by sharks. If you don’t believe in rebirth, you don’t believe in life. If you don’t believe in life, you don’t believe in death. If you don’t believe in death, you don’t know how to live. If you don’t know how to live, you will die without living. If you die without living, you lost your chance. If you lost your chance, you missed the boat. If you missed the boat, you ain’t sailing. If you ain’t sailing, you’re sitting. If you’re sitting, you need to stand up and boogie.”
Carl notices a steady increase in . . . in energy, volume.
“Boogie-woogie glory be to every whap-whop jack-junkie honky-punkie snip-snap-snay foy-fey lard bucket caught in the grip of greed. Shout it out. Strike down, O Lord God, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Norman Vincent Peale. All the TV preachers in the land, sentimental slobs who have called on the syrup of sweetness to suck up money from the more sentimental than they are, to lead human bleating sheep to the slaughter of dreaded dullness and sameology while jerking Scripture from an ancient context into the blur of a modern need to control and be right—to control sheep sitting on their couches on their white cotton wool heinies, buying . . .”
“Amen,” says Clara Cochran.
Carl becomes aware of how well L. Ray is holding the ladies’ attention. All of them. He is almost singing now.
“. . . into avarice, the greed of seeking reward, seeking salvation, seeking the reward of salvation, seeking words to promote narrowness, selling the package, talking carny talk, shunning real work , real work for the real relief of real suffering. Victory is in work. What good is heaven, what good is enlightenment to a kind, lovely lady in a nursing home for whom ‘home’ is a field pea on Mars? I am into the first step of the First Map of the First Breakfast. And what we are about to do, ladies and gentlemen—now stop, look, and listen. ”
L. Ray stops, looks into the eyes in front of him.
“We are about to pronounce the grand fact that nursing homes and churches all across this land must become interchangeable. Why do we need a church house for Christians to visit on Sunday mornings when we’ve got nursing homes for Christians to visit? Christians sitting in churches while nursing homes sit around the corner is wrong!”
“Amen,” says Mrs. Cochran. “That’s what I said.”
“I think that’s what I said,” says Aunt Lil.
“And why do we need nursing homes when we’ve got vacant rooms in church buildings? We need not two institutions such as these, going about instituting institutional double time. We need one . And it shall be called Nurches of America, Chursing Homes of the United States. I’m not saying we can take care of the very sick. But we can take care of the very poor and the very lonely. And all religions, all good people, all noble people, all noble old people, will get behind this bandwagon, which as of to night, July sixth, 2000, is under way from this half circle of chairs in the activity room of Rosehaven Convalescence Center, Hansen County, North Carolina, United States of America, Earth, World of the God in Us All, amen, and amen, and we will see in the generation of our great-grandchildren Nurches of Mother Earth with Earthly Mirth, praise the God in Us All, thank you very much.”
He begins to wind down. Carl looks at Aunt Lil, the others.
“In closing, we’ve got to work against all the silly sissifying of so-called religion in America. And these, my loyal friends, are just words, lifeless without the help of the God in us all. We need to plan a First Breakfast. We’ve had the Last Supper for these two thousand years. Now, in the spirit of rebirth, we also need a First Breakfast plan. We need a hand-me-down-my-walking-cando-it plan. We must embrace the love of neighbor and the give-love spirit of all religions. Here at Rosehaven, here at the first First Breakfast, we will have sons and daughters of the Last Supper, and we will soon hereby christen this new movement something like this—I don’t know yet: the Inclusionist First Breakfast Church of Jacklegs, Jesus, All the Rest, and Baptist Hymns Which Are the Best. Amen. And now let us each say a prayer in our hearts, each for the other, and for the noble old here among us and across the land. May we bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer.”
“O dear God,” says Beatrice, “Walter Cronkite gave me four thousand dollars and that whore-hopping son of mine spent every cent of it in Reno, Nevada.”
Aunt Lil whispered, “Beatrice!”
“Bless you, Miss Beatrice,” says L. Ray.
“God bless America,” says Mrs. Talbert. She starts a slow roll out of the activity room and toward her room. She is ready to go. She has had a very careful look at the preacher’s shoe. I
t’s some kind of brogan, she reckons. She won’t count the bedroom slipper. What is a brogan, anyway? It has laces. She knows that. On his good foot is a nice brogan lace-up, and because he is sick, he didn’t have to wear that if he didn’t want to. That showed character. She thinks she might like this man. But what is a brogan for, working or church? What is a brogan anyway? Brogan.
“Mrs. Talbert,” she hears the preacher say. “We’ve got a short meeting before we leave. And two more songs.”
“I’m out of here, thank you,” she says. She has heard all she wants to hear—he really is a preacher, after all—and the big clock on the wall says eight o’clock and she has to be in bed by eight-thirty and it takes her a while to manage, and the aide on duty doesn’t always come at just the right time. Sometimes they come early and sometimes late. Ah, there is someone, an aide, behind her, to push her on home. She looks over her shoulder. Carrie. Good. Carrie is on second shift. Strong hands to push her on along in the hallway, where there is a slight chill in the air. And there is Darla.
BACK IN THE ACTIVITY ROOM, after the program, Clara Cochran comes forward, pushing her walker, to shake Mr. Flowers’s hand. Here is some damn flash and excitement, for a change! A man who by God says what he means and means what he says. And this man has a plan to finally do something about nursing homes. “Mr. Flowers,” she says, “congratulations. I’m behind you one hundred percent.”
“Mrs. Cochran, thank you. I’m excited about what we’re about to get under way.”
Lil stays in her chair. She is a little bit confused by Mr. Flowers’s message. But she can ask Carl about it. She is wondering if she’s supposed to do something—if she’s been chosen as some kind of disciple. She was unable to concentrate on the sermon, on exactly what is supposed to happen across America, because she kept thinking about Carl—how this is such a good opportunity for him! Even if it is gospel music. She remembers when he sang with the junior choir in church. She’d go to hear him when he sang. It had been too stiff for her, somehow, though she never said that to her sister, of course. The Baptists were just so sure of themselves about alcohol and dancing and went on and on about it. She can’t understand why they say the Bible says this and that, but skip wherever Jesus drank wine. They were able to block out what they didn’t want to hear. Then again, she wished Tad had been a Baptist and hadn’t got into drinking the way he did, and then all that other business. Sometimes she wishes she hadn’t found out what she found out.
Anyway, she went to a Methodist church for a while, a church that seemed a lot softer and easier, but just as sincere. And then Tad came along and he wouldn’t go with her. Her mother had that spell of being “saved” and then got over it, but Margaret wouldn’t ever turn it loose. In any case, Lil had gone to hear the junior choir when Carl was a member, and he was so cute up there with a white shirt and tie, singing away. They all, the three sisters, had such high hopes for him. And then he ended up kind of normal, in the awning business, even though she, Lil, had been almost certain that there was something for him in the world of music—he loved collecting albums so well and had taken guitar lessons.
She looks around for him. Surely he hasn’t gone home without sitting on the porch with her while she smokes one.
WITH HER BACK against the wall, in her chair just outside her room, Darla watches as people come out of the activity room.
Even though he was in shop, he seemed pretty smart to her, and back there in the days when boys combed their hair, he combed his very nicely. Dark red hair.
And then in high school he was in regular classes, and he was always talking to people, patting them on the back, laughing out loud at his own jokes, making fun of people in nice, very acceptable ways and all that. He actually had a kind of adult presence about him. She always did feel there was something a little bit strange about him, but because he liked her, she overlooked that feeling.
On that night of the eighth-grade dance, L. Ray was standing there on her porch in a light gray suit, white shirt, bow tie, and black shoes, holding that green present with the white ribbon, and he gave a little bow with his hands under his chin like a Japanese, which is something she forgot—that Japanese bow. Just about anytime L. Ray came up to you and spoke, he’d do that—do a little head bow with his hands in prayer fashion below his chin.
Of course she was wondering if he’d try to kiss her good night, but in the main she was seeing that particular night as the beginning of a high school career of dates and fun times. For some reason, she hadn’t connected being overweight to being unpopular with the boys. That didn’t dawn on her until later. After all, L. Ray was a boy and had been interested—or at least a little interested—in her for a whole school year.
She wore her sister Glenda’s blue crepe dress with the silk top and frilly bottom and fake pearls and earbobs and lots of lipstick and eye makeup. Glenda was seven years older than her and already married then.
He opened the passenger-side door for her. It was his daddy’s Oldsmobile . . . or Pontiac, one of those big ones with a lot of chrome, but it was very old and worn-out looking also. L. Ray’s daddy sold eggs.
She remembered he pulled the car into the Blue Light, a main nightspot back then, to get cigarettes. And then he’d said, “How about we stop back in here after the dance for a couple of tall Busches?”
Darla and Linda McGregor had drunk beer together twice. Darla was ready to bop. There were lights in her eyes. Blue lights from the Blue Light. Red lights from the cigarette she was about to smoke. White lights from the dance. Green lights from the dashboard of the car when they drove off somewhere later, maybe out to Lake Blanca. She knew a lot about life. She had sat in the back row at the movies with Diane Coble more than once. When Dwayne Teal would come in, Darla would quietly watch them out of the corner of her eye. They would make out during the whole movie. Not to speak of what she’d seen Glenda and her boyfriends do sometimes when Mama and Daddy were gone.
So they arrived, after each having smoked a cigarette on the way.
The dance was in the library. L. Ray parked the car by the tennis courts in back, and they walked around to the front of the school and up the high brick steps and in through the doors and then down that long, long wood-floored hall. She hasn’t seen a hallway with a wood floor in thirty years.
Here he comes out of the activity room, leg out straight, rolling along, laughing.
AT HER DESK, Anna is finishing the notes for the next day’s care-plan meeting. The staff will consider whether or not to downgrade several residents from “skilled” care. Mrs. Osborne’s case is coming up. A resident’s downgrading will doom their Medicare, of course, and a strong case has to be made either way.
“You’re putting in mighty long hours.” It’s Carl at her door. She can hardly admit that she has hoped he’ll stop by. His voice seems lower than usual.
“I left two files here,” says Anna, “and so when I came back and found them, I decided to stay to finish up. We’ve got a care-plan meeting tomorrow, which means lots of important decisions. And Mr. Rhodes is going to be here, the owner. He comes to only a couple or three of these meetings a year. He probably ought not to know about Mr. Flowers’s movement.”
“Why?”
She wishes he’d come on in and sit down. “He’s very religious and probably won’t like the sound of it. I’ve just got a feeling he won’t. But Mr. Flowers is not going to be here that long. Except his physical therapist says his knee has suddenly gone stiff on him. She’s planning to call his doctor.”
“I won’t say anything to Mr. Rhodes,” says Carl, “but some of the ladies might.” He concentrates on keeping his voice pitched low.
“We’ll just have to see. Looks like your guitar lessons are paying off.”
“I guess.” Relax the vocal cords. Relax the vocal cords. “Looks like I’ll be helping Mr. Flowers with some of his programs.”
“Do you have a cold?”
“Oh, no.”
“How many songs do you all
know?”
“Not too many. Actually we’re writing a few together.”
“He mentioned that. I heard the one about problems.”
“‘Ain’t Got No Problems.’ Right. We worked up that and ‘The Safety Patrol Song.’ Were you ever in the safety patrol?”
“No. We didn’t have one of those.”
“Oh, man. That was a big deal at Hansen Junior High. White strap, the works. We had these inspections, and your strap had to be real white. We had some kind of paste to whiten it with, I remember. And right now I’m working on the words to a song called ‘How Come I Miss You When You’re with Me All the Time?’ L. Ray got the idea from somebody on the porch, just like he did the others, passed it to me, and I’m doing the words. He’ll do the music.”
“I’ll bet. And he does all those old gospel tunes.”
“Yeah, we started working on ‘Angel Band.’ Same as in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? Have you seen that?”
“No.”
A fountain erupts in Carl’s head. “Want to go?” He immediately regrets asking.
“Well . . . well, yes.”
“Then I guess they’re not your children, are they?”
“Carl—actually, they are. I’ve been divorced a little over a year.”
“Oh. I see. Well, the movie. How about Saturday night?”
“Okay. Cool.”
“Great.”
Carl turns—too abruptly, he knows—and walks away. He can’t believe he didn’t even say good-bye. He hasn’t had a date in three months, since Teresa Suggs. “Good night,” he says to Carrie, standing by another aide stationed at the front desk. Is her name Latricia?
LATRICIA, TAKING OVER night desk duty for Traci Cox, listens as Carrie tries to explain something about a note in the activity room, above the microwave.
“Well,” says Carrie, “if you don’t think it’s funny, just come down here and look at it.”
“I seen the sign, Carrie.” Latricia doesn’t want to walk any more than she has to. Not now. She’ll be in the halls all night.
Lunch at the Piccadilly Page 6
