Old Border Road

by Susan Froderberg

  I went to the dictionary to know the word irony better.

  Then I went outside to look to see what the storm had left us.

  THE HIRED MAN comes slogging through the mud and stops before the door of the tackroom. He looks down at his boots, and I stop my search for another jar of creosote cream and go out to him. The bill of his cap has lost the perfect curve he had in the past kept fastidiously modeled into it. He touches the flattened lip of it in greeting, just the same. I tell him I’ve by now haltered the bay and the mare and have got them out to pasture. I’m about to do the same with the sorrel and the paint. The animals are all right, I say, though the whites of their eyes were showing and they were trembling like all get-out to get out when I found them. Their stalls are a mess, I say. There’s more work than I can even see through here.

  That’s what I come for, Missus, he says.

  Then he tells me the flood has all but washed away the trailer home he had been living in, a paint-blistered aluminum thing that had been settled out on a blown-over parcel of rubble and scrag. He says that all of it broke apart and was set afloat like a lot of little toy boats and that he’s been sleeping in the backseat of the Ambassador ever since. I offer him the use of the toolhouse to bunk in, and after we feed and settle the horses he goes and gathers what few things there are left to him and brings the stuff on over.

  The hired man begins by clearing and sweeping the toolhouse clean of the leakage and rubbish. Afterward he goes out and opens the hood of the pickup and dries the wires and resets the plugs. He borrows the vehicle to haul over an old iron-framed cot that he has fished out of the waters. He finds seat cushions from some place and dry enough, I don’t know where, and I get him sheets from the house and we make a bed for him alongside the mowing-machine parts and the harrows and drags. He tidies everything in the toolroom nicely, making a home among augers and baling forks and grapples, cans of motor oil and gasoline. He sits his transistor on a bucket turned downward, and he sits himself on the cot next to it and tries dialing the music in. After a while he gives up, having found nothing but wet static to listen to. Guess I’ll be having to hum a few a my own tunes, he says.

  Once the hired man is settled in, I begin to feel a little bit of settle in me. He helps by driving into town to ask the man at the Centro Médico to come out and have a look at Son, returning with the message that we’ll have to hold tight, as there are too many people hurt and needing care first. We can’t sit around and wait, I say. We have to at least, in the meantime, try to put the place back into some kind of order.

  The hired man will find spills and leaks and drafts and broken things for fixing throughout and around the old adobe house. He will change the blown fuses in the box and spackle the cracks in the walls, climb up onto the roof to straighten or replace what tiles have fallen loose or been slived, come in to inspect the rooms and corridors, fixing outlets and switches, hinges and latches, oiling the knobs and the locks on the doors, unstopping pipes and drains, untangling tangles of wires. He will help me brush the tangles and wet mats out of the old dog’s old coat, help keep the horses and calves watered and bedded and fed. He will be of service in caring for Son, until more help should come, assisting with the linen changing and the bathing. His presence and his steadiness become aid enough.

  Hartry, I will come to call him.

  Missus, he will always say.

  Together we survey the debacle. We pull rubber boots on used for irrigating and tread through the ooze and the sludge, using one a hoe, the other a rake, for walking and prodding sticks. We go out to the melon shed and point out each to the other the way the water has broken through the holes and seams of everything. We find the cement gully filled up with silty water, and all about the concrete floor there’s a strew of debris. We gather the jetsam and toss it into the back of the pickup, and we motor down the road slowly, the water still half-tire high and finning out of the wheelwells in strange song as we roll along. We pass by more waste afloat, and stuff that’s about dead-sunk and poked out of the muck—pieces of corrugated-tin roofing, rolls of baling wire, a section of picket fence, a downed county highway sign, stiffened birds, a bent pitchfork, a shovelhead, a tractor seat, the hipbone of a cow, a doll without a head, broken crockery, a shoe, a bit ring, even a pair of false teeth among the dunnage.

  In days to follow we get out and keep at the job of hauling away the ruin and setting right what remains, all the while looking out for the man to come and check on Son. We bulldoze the flotsam and trash into heaps and cart it away. We cut up and drag out some of the spindled trees downed in the old lemon grove, clearing all the broken limbs and stumps out from it. We treat the horses’ mildewed hooves, we doctor the calves, we bury drowned cats and chickens, toss limp snakes and stiff rodents and gophers into the canal. We toss everything worth nothing into the water, not wanting to leave time enough for any molder or rot of any kind to set in. We throw the junk in and stand on the bank watching it whirl and bob before whatever it is or was is sunk. We watch what doesn’t sink float off like a body does. Then we go back to the old adobe house to tend again to Son.

  I WAS OUT in the watertruck trying to restart it when I saw the sheriff’s car motoring toward the house through still inches of water. He parked the car and got out and sloshed over to me in his rubber boots. He said something about the contacts being wet, and he opened the hood and put his head in under and fiddled around with something inside and said, Try again, and I did, and the motor turned over this time. Leave it to running, he said, and he closed the hood and came over to the passenger side and took his hat off and got in.

  It needs to idle a minute, he said.

  I wasn’t planning on going anywhere yet, I said. I just wanted to know that I could when I wanted to.

  I wasn’t planning on driving all the way out here to give you a fix either, he said. I’m just checking on you and Son, is all. Ham tells me Son’s laid up. Took a hard fall, did he?

  Just before the rain, I said.

  The sheriff stared at the inside of his hat as if looking for something inside it, a manner shared by a lot of men who have made their lives here.

  Son doing okay?

  I hope so. He got over a bad fever anyway. But he’s not up yet. I’m waiting for that doctor’s assistant in town, or whatever he is, to come out. I’m worried. I really am.

  Man’s got his hands full, the sheriff says. Relying on volunteers. Everybody’s struggling. Everybody’s doing what he or she can do.

  What’s Ham been doing? I said.

  The sheriff looked into his hat and shook his head. Ham’s in a mess, he said. He surely would’ve come out here to see how the two of you were doing, but he got all raveled up during the flooding. It was a disaster. The whole thing’s been a disaster.

  Guess that’s why they call these things disasters, after all.

  What makes you so smart-alecky sometimes?

  I shrug.

  Anyways, as to Ham. Damned flabbergasting! Jeez—I still can’t reckon it, the way he and Pearl’s entire house went floating away. Place slid just like that down into the water. Built right close along the riverside at the start, but who could’ve guessed such a thing to happen. Man, when them banks gave loose, everything fell in and all but disappeared. Wouldn’t believe it to see it. Just like that. Gone. Swallowed up. Most every bit of it. They lost a lot of their stock as well. Even lost their rig.

  Where’s Ham at?

  We got him there at the Centro Médico. He’ll be kept resting a few more days. We found him bobbing down the canalbank clinging to a tractor-size inner tube he was using as a buoy. He was hollering out ahoy to get help until someone come. Nothing wrong with him really, they say. Just wore-out tired. Likely a touch of shock to boot.

  There’s no way to telephone with the lines still down.

  It’ll be a while.

  I’ll have to leave Son and go into town. I don’t want to move him if I don’t have to. Hartry can watch him for me until I’m back. Maybe
I can at least get some medical advice from that man, and I can check on Ham there the same time.

  Ham would appreciate a familiar face, I’m sure, he said. We’re trying to get word to his wife and his girl, but they’re hours away, and the road north is no good yet. Anyways, he said, you better get that husband a yours looked after.

  The sheriff climbed out of the watertruck and put his hat on, raising a hand, but not looking back at me to take leave.

  Later in the day I make the slow wet drive to the Centro Médico.

  I’m looking to find the man that should know something here. I wander down a dank-smelling hallway, the linoleum squishy beneath my feet, and find the man in a medicine room, pouring orange juice into little paper cups. He puts the container down and looks at me and waits for me to speak. I launch right in. I tell him about Son, about how the accident happened. I tell him about the fever. I describe the fit.

  He listens, not saying anything until I finish and am quiet. I look at him and wonder what he remembers of me. I wait for what he might say. He lets out a breath. He uses the word neurogenic. He uses the words tonic and clonic.

  I don’t know, I say.

  He hurt his head, the man says, is what the case is.

  That was some months back he was brought in after driving into that ditch, I say. You fixed him up all right then. He was recovered enough to work and ride again after that. He was moving about just fine.

  No, the man says, I’m saying he must have hurt his head again when he took the fall off the horse. Things can go bad when a person gets hit a second time and too soon again. Yet in this instance, could instead, or in addition, be his neck.

  The seizures went away, I say. They haven’t since happened. It was just the one day. And there wasn’t any more fever. Hasn’t been. Seems to me he should be getting better with the worst being over with.

  Then he ought to be up and about by now, the man says.

  You don’t think it just takes time for the legs to get working as they should?

  The highway west is open again, he says. I suggest you and your hired man get your husband bundled up and in a truck, and then be getting on your way as soon as is possible.

  The man turns away and goes back to pouring orange juice.

  Where’s Ham at?

  Down the hall and left, he says, nudging his shoulder in a direction.

  I find Ham in a common room with four other beds in it—more like cots than beds, really—with a Mexican man Ham’s age, and another man across from him whose arms are swaddled and bent, and two others at the end of the room laid out flat, just kids both of them, and both looking pretty bad. Ham sits up in the bed, seeming pleased to see me. I pull a stool up to his bedside and take the hand he has out to me. He bursts into talk. He is all story, a story he has told and will tell again and again, until it is memorized and bettered.

  He waggles his arms about in the air in his describing. Ye gods, when that river began to rise! he says. You could see the roiling waters beating away at the sides of the banks like there was a monster with great jaws chomping away in there. And like that came the breach—ah! holy bejesus, could not, but could not, believe my eyes. There was a couple of the hired men around left to help me. We run around like crazy men. We tried to sandbag the break as best we could, tried bundles of arrowweed brush, any kind of brush, that we’d bound with barbed wiring to stanch it, none of it working any, but we kept on trying, plugging the break with wood pilings, cut trees, rocks we’d gathered, mattresses, chairs, even a sack of dead cats and chickens, anything we could get a hold of that wasn’t already washed away on us—even drove an entire disc machine into the cleave. But to no avail. The current was too strong, stronger than any man. We couldn’t rein it back. No one could’ve. Now everthing is gone. All my stock is gone—my ponies, my beeves, my everthing. We even lost our prize, Bodacious. He turns to look out the window, breathing as though he’s out of breath.

  I don’t know what to say, I say. Sheriff says the waters are ebbing. It won’t be long. You’ve got to get something back. It can’t all be gone. You’ll see. Things just don’t all up and disappear like that, I say.

  Don’t they? Ham says. What I’ll go back and see is the outright desolation of the place, is what I’ll see. He shakes his head. There won’t be much left, if anything, he says. It’s a free-for-all out there right now. It may even be done with. Most everthing of value that didn’t die or get busted is been taken away by those who would just outright come and take it. Whatever there might’ve been to be found is by now sitting over on the other side of the border. And I’m too tired to start over, he says. He raises an arm and then drops it heavy as a wet towel whopped onto the bed.

  That means you’ll be leaving, I say, not asking a question.

  There’s that daughter a mine’s about to give birth, he says. I ought to get up there to see her. To see it, this grandchild, when it comes. There might be something of value to the whole grandpappy thing. People says there is, anyways.

  Tell me if you see Son, I say.

  See Son wheres?

  In your grandbaby.

  Ham shakes his head and looks down. We done the best we could with them two, he says. No one’s fault, he says. Or everyone’s fault, you could say. Either way you want to look at it.

  Ham takes my hand again. You bring Son up and stay with us.

  He’s got to get better first.

  The light gauzes through the cloth tacked over the window. We sit a minute in the quiet.

  Ham tips his head back onto the pillow. I miss my wife, he says. I need my Pearl. Everthing here is lost to me. Lost to us. She’ll tell us what we need to do. She’ll hold us all together. Pearl’ll know. She always does know.

  The road up should be passable soon, I say.

  The way is easy enough, he says.

  We squeeze each the other’s hand.

  Go on, before you have me actin’ like a weepy old man. I won’t allow it, he says.

  I promise Ham a visit from us, first chance there is, knowing I won’t go. Then I get up from the stool and we bid our good-byes, each waving a hand, and we say our good-lucks, as everyone does.

  THERE ARE NIGHT skies that arrive clear and brilliant again. There are phases of the moon to be seen, and along with them the dim light of Andromeda, the orange ball of Mars, the cloud-shrouded Venus, and Saturn, ringed and mooned with Titan beside, and Jupiter, brightest of all. Distant suns and galaxies swing brightly above and counterwise to the clocks of our making. There are tailed sightings of comets to behold, the orbiting of manmade things, and cosmic objects that tumble and flicker, all wondrous as lives on the earth below.

  MORNING COMES WITH the warm dawn.

  And the river runs whisperingly, ponderously, heavy with the silt they say it’s carried since its beginning.

  I open all the shades and shutters to let the light flood inside. Watch the drift of motes. Where can order be made?

  Start with the dust. Its constant drift has been settled by the spell of humidity, turning the dirt a covering of skin throughout the house. Use the duster tool and wag it up high in the air, working top to bottom, methodically, stroking over every wall in every room, damp-ragging the baseboards, the windowsills, the shelves. Shake draperies, beat upholstery, whisk out insides of sideboard and cabinetry, sweep floors. Wipe the hardwood down in a lemon-oil mix of hot water. Mop and wax tiles and linoleum to bring to a shine once more. Scrub stove and oven with abrasives, vinegar the inside of the refrigerator, wash cupboards and pantry, arrange cleaning supplies beneath sink and in broom closet, tack back anything hanging awop throughout the place. Polish appliances, get countertops and chrome back to gleaming. Bring forth appearances. Wash pots and dishes, leaving them dry to sparkle in the light streaming through the kitchen window. Launder and iron the linens, make the beds fresh. Finish the ablutions.

  Ready belongings for satchel and suitcase, mine and his, accordingly. Think of the things we mostly don’t need.

 
The old dog scratches at the doorscreen. I go outside with her and wander in the garden beds to see what might be left. There’s a brittlebush down by the cattle pen that’s been shocked into flowering after the storm. I cut a bunch of the hardy, baby florets and bring them back to the old adobe house and fill a vase with them.

  I walk room to room in the quiet.

  Rose, I say, waiting for the echo.

  Rose’s Daddy, I say, still hearing nothing.

  WE HAD TO figure a way of carrying him out of the house and getting him lifted up into the back of the pickup. It was my idea to use the old Navajo that lay on the floor. The hired man nodded and got the rug and brought it into the old man and Rose’s room, where Son still lay. We turned Son to one side, and the hired man made a face at the swelled and mottled flesh. Those sores are doubled in size every time we have to look it them, he said.

  There was an odor festering. My stomach rolled at the smell of him, this man, yet my husband. My fingers left imprints in the skin in the places where I pressed. We had bathed him yesterday evening, but already we needed to bathe him again. The hired man brought in a basin filled with warm water, and I gathered towels and washcloths. Together we pivoted Son, one side to the next, and I soaped and rinsed his skin, front and back, and applied a zinc ointment to the sores while Hartry held him to stay for me. Reach me that tin of talcum if you can, I said. I powdered Son up with the stuff, putting us to coughing and sneezing in the baby-fragranced cloud of dust that rose about. The old dog went into a fit of snorting and hobbled out of the room. A cricket jumped out of a boot and skittered across the floor.

  Here, spread the rug lengthwise on the bed, I said, and fold it halfways the longways. There, that’s it. I had by now shaved the beard from Son’s face, and we had him dressed in clean clothes and sprinkled with his old-spicey aftershave, and he smelled good and looked almost handsome again. Wait, I said. I reached for a comb and neatened Son’s hair. There, I said. Ready. Now we shifted him over the lump of folded rug and turned him to face the hired man. Seeing he had a firm grasp of Son’s hip and his shoulder, I could then reach for the edge of the rug and pull it from its fold so that it was full open beneath Son, and we rested him flat onto it. This is where the hard part started.