by E. J. Olsen
He turned his face away from her and stared at the opposite wall. He was trying to call up a vision of him sick and then him doing much better. Him playing cricket in Oronuevo and him eating pelau at Belle Isle. For a moment he was perplexed. What was happening to him? He slipped into a deep stillness to ponder yet again the smell of freshly turned funeral soil, so far from where his navel string was buried.
Finally, she remembered that he was wheeled to the window every day after lunch. Who knows how that ritual began, but he sat in that same spot almost daily, beginning with the first winter he arrived and then spring and summer and fall and winter and again and again, once more, until he had marked a little over three years by the window. Through frost and snow and spring rains he watched out of it while he fin-ished digesting his food. He followed the pedestrians heading to the liquor stores and other notable neighborhood destinations and absently glanced at cars crossing the Kercheval intersection on the way to perhaps Belle Isle? He contemplated navel strings and final resting places.
Maybe that's what he wanted now? she thought.
—Do you want to go to the window, sweetie?
Gratefully, the old man looked up at her and nodded. Finally, she understood and smiled back at him.
Now how to get him there, since she couldn't lift him by herself to put him in the wheelchair and everyone else was so busy. Conveniently, the one-ton white crane used to lift residents was already in a corner of the old man's room, likely in readiness for his afternoon window appointment. Luckily, she had been trained to use it yesterday. So confidently she marched over to get it. With its boom pointed toward the floor she maneuvered the lift near the old man's bed and removed the halter left dangling on the hook. He was almost smiling as she leaned over him to place his arms through the halter, pull a strap between his legs, fasten it in the back, and check the placement of the loops for the hook.
Then she stood back to look at him.
—You're a mess, sweetie. At least let me wash your face. He nodded, a crooked little smile developing.
After she washed his face and combed his few strands of hair, she wheeled the chair by the bed and locked it into what she thought would be the perfect spot to receive the old man when she was ready to lower him.
She was almost ready with everything and then …
—Oh my God, sweetie. I bet your diaper needs changing. She rolled the wheelchair aside and unfastened the halter. His crooked little smile turned into a look of alarm.
—Don't worry, sweetie, I know what I'm doing, and she began to change and wash him with the adroitness of an old pro.
He closed his eyes at the feel of the young hand covered by a warm washcloth wiping Mummy's territory. There's nothing there anymore, Mummy. It's all gone.
With the halter and wheelchair back in place, she moved the crane into position parallel to the bed. All of this activity occurred over and around the sunray, now angled slightly off the bed. The young woman darted in and out of its range as she prepared the crane without paying any attention to the motes traveling up and down the ray and the intermittent sunshine that caused her to squint. At last she felt the sun's warmth.
—Hey, sweetie, you're going to have a warm day at the window. You may not even be able to stand it.
She placed a pillow on the wheelchair seat for comfort and rolled him on his side. Now she was ready. She turned the directional knob on the lever to move the boom up and pumped the lever until it reached a good level for hooking the halter. Then she slid the base of the crane under the bed and pumped again, gently lifting his once-hefty body, guiding it all the way. He was now almost facedown and moving his heavily wrinkled arms and thin legs as if he was winding up in the yard to bowl to Toli.
—Hold on, sweetie. Don't move so much. I'm going to roll you over to the chair. We don't have far to go; hang in. Oh, you know what I mean.
He nodded, his smile having returned.
As she positioned the old man over the wheelchair, she pulled his legs down and around to make sure his bottom hit first. She reached to change the directional knob so that she could now lower the boom when she pumped the lever. It was jammed. It wouldn't move at all, not to pump up, not to pump down.
—Oh my God, what am I going to do? She looked up at the man, who was moving his arms left over right and right over left, his legs in running formation and said firmly, —Be still until I figure this thing out.
She was able to reach the emergency cord by his bed and pulled and pulled and pulled. But no one came to the room. The room had no phone because no one ever called the old man. She began yelling.
—Ms. Nurse, Ms. Nurse! Someone! Help!
No one came. All she heard were responses from other residents. —We're here, they yelled out. One lady down the hall began screaming. The young staffer yelled back.
—Everything is fine; don't worry.
So she patted the old man on his shoulder and said, —Okay, sweetie, don't let them upset you. You're going for a ride now. And she rolled the entire contraption, Sweetie and all, over to the doorway and looked up and down the hall. No one, not a soul was in sight. She yelled again, —Ms. Nurse, Ms. Nurse, someone!
No one.
The nursing station was midway in the hall. She thought to roll the crane to the station and use the phone to call for help, but the machine's pivot wheel suddenly locked tight. She pushed her foot on the wheel lock, then lifted up on it, then kicked it. She kneeled down to jiggle it, but it wouldn't loosen. So now the crane wouldn't move out of the room or back into it.
—We're stuck, sweetie. She smiled. He smiled too, and nodded, but thought to himself, Man must live.
She realized she had to chance it at this point. He wasn't so high up in the air; things looked relatively stable if she could get him to keep absolutely still.
—Sweetie, I have to call for help. You have to be real good and be still. Don't move your hands or feet. What are you doing anyway? You look like you're pitching in a baseball game. Be still; I'm going to call for help.
He hung there, his brown body against the white crane, and watched the young staffer rush down the hall.
Well, maybe luck's allowed today, maybe, maybe. I'll be able to go to Belle Isle to see another game. Yeah, buddy, yeah. Yuh run with de bat when one guy hit de ball, he's going to run to try and score as many runs as he can. It depends on how hard yuh hit de ball. If yuh hit it real hard, it go over de boundary, dat's a six. Yuh score big, den. If yuh don't reach to de end, dey run yuh out, dey call it runout; some of dem bhais can't make it; dey try to make one run and sometimes dey don't; dey don't make it den dey want to make two runs and so on, and when one guy hit de ball and he don't hit it hard enough and he hit it in front of one of de fielders and he have to run with de bat in he hand and he run, run, and what the hell. Yes buddy, run, run.
She ran to the telephone, and in the instant she turned her head to grab the receiver, knocking over a silk floral arrangement in the process, and hit the button for security, she heard a loud snapping noise. —Oh my God, and she whipped her head around, expecting to see the old man on the floor.
But the crane was completely upright in the doorway and the boom in the same position she had left it. Only he was gone, halter and all. She froze, not able to respond when security finally answered the phone.
She dashed over to the crane and passed her hand under where the old man should have been hanging. He really wasn't there. — Sweetie, sweetie, where are you? She squeezed past it to enter his room and looked under the covers, under the bed, in the closet, in the restroom. She ran from room to room, like a mad woman; residents called out to her, each with his or her own need for food, water, diaper, conversation.
—Not now! she hollered back to them. Not now!
She pushed open the exit door. She ran down the stairs yelling, —Old man, old man! She ran from floor to floor, past the staff, looking into each bedroom and each utility closet. When she returned to the fourth floor, Ms. Nurse, the head o
f security and most of the floor's staff were calmly standing by the lift, looking at her quizzically.
—The old man is gone, Ms. Nurse. He left.
—What are you talking about?
—He's just gone.
The huddle of fourth-floor staff and a few from the other floors, along with the head of security, began prowling the halls, peering behind the nursing counter and into the other rooms searching for the old man. The head of security, a rather large beefy man, tried to push the lift into the room, and when it wouldn't roll, he picked it up and moved it aside. Another staff went to the wheelchair and shook it. This unnerved Ms. Nurse who yelled out, —He ain't there, fool!
Bewildered, the young woman stood in the middle of the hallway in front of the old man's room. She began sobbing, long tears descending like a waterfall. Snot fell freely from her nose. She stared at the lift and at the wheelchair and at the bed and at the window in his room. It was then she remembered that the room had been sunny before; now it was gray. She looked up and down the hall and the whole place was gray. Didn't she tell the old man as she was preparing him for the crane that he would have a real sunny day at the window?
She walked slowly to the hall window, put her knee on the ledge and peered up and down the boulevard.
—What the hell you looking for, girl? He damn sure ain't out there.
To the astonishment of Ms. Nurse, the young woman, said, —Hush, and squeezed her eyes enough to be able to peer through the bright sun. She looked up and down trying to spot the old man. The sun was coming from the south, bright like a new beginning. Traffic was riding into it. But she saw nothing. No old man. She pushed her wet face against the window and stared openly into the sun.
—Old man, how could you do this to me in my first week? I didn't want to stay here forever, but I need this job now. What have you done? They'll fire me for sure. How did I lose you? Why did you do this to me? I was trying to help you.
But if she had heard the commotion south of the nursing home, just inside the island on the north side of the casino. If she had known the jubilation all of them there were experiencing as the last batsman hit the last ball in the last innings, over, over, over the boundary so far it couldn't be recovered. All of the players stood with arms outstretched and knees slightly buckled, wonderment and joy on their faces; women and men fans clutched their hearts, clutched each other, and clutched their children as they watched the ball's trajectory over the road, past the sun, over the river heading west and out of view. And then this tremendous release of clapping and crying and rummy shouts coming from the entire casino area, pitch and oval, picnic benches, across the road over to the riverside. Had she heard the chorus, loud as one voice:
—Well played, old bhai, well played, well played!
If she had heard all of that, she would have well understood.
THE DEAD MAN'S BOAT
BY PETER MARKUS
Delray
Us brothers, we took us our mud and our fish-fishing poles baited with worms and rust and mud and we hopped up into the dead man's boat, that boat that we found washed up on our dirty river's dirty shores, and we headed ourselves upriver, up past the shipwrecked mill where our father used to go inside to work, it sitting dark and silenced and fireless there on the river's muddy bank, up around the bend in the river, past the other string of mills farther north along the river, mills with fires still burning there inside them, up toward where the beaded lights of that big steel bridge stretching from our side of the river all the way over to the river's other side, it was all lit up in the night like a constellation of sunken-ship stars, each star shining out in the nighttime's dark like the shiny heads of nails hammered into some backyard telephone pole. We were chugging along, us brothers, with Brother sitting up in the bow, holding up a lantern's light for us to better see the river by, and the brother that I am was kneeling in the back of the boat, what's called the stern, with one hand on the outboard's tiller, the other hand hanging itself over the edge of the boat, the fingers of that hand dragging themselves across the muddy skin of the river. We were on our way upriver, up to where the dirty river that runs through our dirty river town begins, it runs all the way up through the city, us brothers heading up there to see if we might catch us some of the big city's big dirty river fish, when out of nowhere in the night and in the river's muddy dark we heard, then saw, a boat, much bigger than ours, it was cutting across and down the river, it was heading right for us brothers. There's a boat coming right for us, Brother turned his head and said, as he held up the lantern light with that fire glowing inside it so that his face flashed full like the moon. I looked up at Brother then. There was a look that us brothers sometimes liked to look at each other with. It was the kind of a look that actually hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing the looking. Imagine that look. Do I look like a brother born blind? was what I said to Brother then, and I cut the tiller hard and to the right. But that boat, that other boat much bigger than ours, that boat with us brothers not sitting down inside it, it kept on coming toward us brothers, as if it didn't see us brothers, as if us brothers weren't even there. But it saw us, this boat, the people sitting there inside it: this, us brothers, we knew. When we moved it, our boat, it moved closer toward where it was we moved. And before we knew what to do next, because we knew we couldn't outrun it, this boat, it was soon coming across our bow, it was doing what it could do to hit us, this boat, even though we didn't, we couldn't, know why. What did we, us brothers, do, to a boat like this boat? Us brothers, all we ever really did out on the river was fish. We didn't know what we should do, other than what we ended up doing. Us brothers, the both of us brothers, we both jumped, headfirst, out of our boat, the dead man's boat, the dead man who fell into the river pissing into the river for luck, we headed down into the river, and we swam ourselves down to get us away from this coming-after-us boat. When we stuck our boy heads up out of the river, to see if we were both of us still alive, to see where our boat was, to see where that other boat was, all us brothers could see was our boat drifting its way back and down the river, back to from where us brothers, ourselves, had just come from. That other boat, it seemed, had all but disappeared, and not even the sound of it could be heard by our ears. Our boat, the dead man's boat, away from us brothers, it had drifted too far away from us brothers for us to be able to swim back to it for us to get back in it. So, us brothers, we swam ourselves toward the river's muddy shore, we swam ourselves out of us brothers' breath, and plopped ourselves down in the mud at the edge of the river. Yes, like a couple of out-of-water fish, us brothers, there in the mud, we sucked in at the air until the sky above us, it helped us brothers to begin breathing again. We stood up, in the mud, out of the mud, but we did not wipe the mud off us. Us brothers, we liked mud and the fishy river smells that always smelled of river and mud and fish. With mud in our eyes, us brothers, we turned to look one last time back downriver, to where our boat, the dead man's boat, it had floated downriver and down around a bend in the river and almost out of sight, this boat with our fishing poles inside it, our buckets empty of fish. Us brothers, we didn't know what we were going to do, or how we were going to get back home, now that we didn't have us brothers a boat to take us back home in. So what us brothers did was, we figured it, in our boy heads, that it was too early in the night for us to head ourselves back home. We'd gone out, that night, out onto the river, out on the river in the dead man's boat, to spend the dark night fishing. It was what us brothers did, at night, and in the morning, and sometimes, too, in the day: we fished. Our mother and our father both believed that we were brothers sound asleep in our beds when we stepped outside through our bedroom's window and slipped, as we always did, down to the river. We had until the sun's rise for us brothers to get us back home before our father would call out to us to wake us with the word, Son. When our father called out to us brothers, Son, we both knew, we were crossing that dirty river together. But us brothers, we didn't want to go back home, to bed, in a room in
a house with our mother and father asleep in it. Our house, with our mother and father in it, it was not the kind of a house that us brothers liked to go back to. The river, out fishing on the river, that was where us brothers liked to be. But now, us brothers, we didn't have a boat to be out on the river in, we didn't have us our fish-fishing poles for us to fish for our fish with, we didn't have us our buckets of mud and rust and worms for us brothers to bait our hooks with. It was just us brothers now standing on the upriver banks of a river and a city that was not ours. Our mother and our father had often told us brothers that the city was not a place for us boys to be. Don't ever go, was what our mother told us. But us brothers, we didn't much like to listen to what our mother liked to tell us. Our mother, she was the kind of a mother who told us brothers not to walk through mud, a mother who told us to wash our hands before we ate, our hands that always smelled of fish, our hands with mud dried hard in our palms. We liked mud and we liked it the way the fish's silver scales stuck to our hands. These were fish that we fished out of the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, fish that we took back home with us and we gutted the guts out of those fish, we cut off the heads of those fish, and then we hammered them, those fish, those fish heads, into the backyard telephone pole out back in the back of our yard. In the end, there was exactly a hundred and fifty fish heads, hammered and nailed into that pole's creosoted wood. Each fish, each fish head, us brothers, we gave each one a name. Not one was called Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John was mine and my brother's name. We called each other Brother. Brother, Brother said to me then. What do you want to do? Brother was the brother of us brothers who always liked to ask these kinds of questions. To Brother, I did not know what then to say. Us brothers, we stood there like that on the dirty river's dirty banks, and we looked around this place that us brothers, we'd been told, this was not the kind of a place for us brothers to be. But this place, this city with this dirty river running through it, it didn't look much different than the town that was ours with its dirty river running through it and with its dirty river mill built up along its dirty river banks, its smokestacks that stained the sky the color of rust and mud. We liked a sky that was stained the color of rust and mud. Our mother once let it be known to us brothers that there was a sky, there was a sky, our mother told us, bigger than the sky above the river that was ours. Us brothers, we couldn't picture this, a sky bigger than the sky that was our backyard. We couldn't picture a town without a dirty river running through it where us brothers could run down to it to fish. This is our river, was what we said to our mother then, and this was what I said to Brother too. This is our river, I said, then. There's no place else for us to be. We stood there, like this, for a while, like this, just standing there along the edge of the river. The moon in the sky had not yet begun to rise. The sky, it was mostly dark. Behind us, away from the river, most of the houses sitting side by side in the dark, these houses did not have lights lighting them up from inside them. We stood there, on the edge of this river, but us brothers, we couldn't fish. We reached down into the mud and found us some stones and we threw them out and into the river. Sometimes the stones skipped. Sometimes, in the dark, the stones made a sound like a fish leaping up out of the water. Us brothers, we knew more about fish than most people know about fish. Us brothers know that when a fish jumps up out of the water, what that means is that that fish, it isn't a fish for us brothers to fish for and catch: not with our fishing hooks baited thick with mud and sunk down to the river's bottom. Us brothers, we didn't know how to fish for fish that were fish that jumped up as if to bite the sky. It's true, sometimes us brothers, we could walk out into the river and reach with our hands down into the river and fish us up some fish with our bare boy hands. It's true, too, that we could sometimes dunk our buckets into the river and like this we'd fill them up with a mix of fish and mud. But it was not one of those kinds of nights for us brothers. We didn't have us our buckets or our poles or a boat for us to fish from. And our hands hanging down by our legs, they were all four of them balled up into fists. Let's go for a walk, was what I said to Brother then, and we both of us turned and started walking in from the river, up past houses that did not look like anyone was living inside them. There were no lights lit up and burning on the insides of these houses, there were no streetlights lighting up the streets outside. But us brothers, we had us eyes like the marbly eyes of fish, eyes that, like moons, could see in the river at night. And so, us brothers, into this dark, we walked. We walked and we walked, it didn't matter where, until the mud on our boots had all of the way been walked off. That's how us brothers liked to wash the mud from off the bottoms of our boots. We didn't like it when our mother made us wash the mud off with a brush held in our hands. So we walked, and we walked, but we didn't see a face that looked like the faces that were ours. It was as if we had walked into a dead town, or maybe it was just a town that was early-to-bed asleep. Even the stars in the sky above this dead town seemed not to be shining. But still, us brothers, we walked. We did not talk. We just listened to the voice that was us brothers inside the each of our boy heads. In this town, even the cars that we saw, here on our walk, all of them seemed to be made out of rust. What us brothers needed was a couple of fishing poles for us to do some fishing with. Even though the fish were jumping, this night, maybe us brothers could get those fish to go back down to the river's muddy bottom. So we went looking around town for two poles for us to fish with. There was a store with a sign above the door that said on it, Delray's Live Bait, but the door, when we pulled on it to get it to open, it did not open up. There were other buildings with the same two words on it, Delray, Delray, some of them, these words, spray-painted on pieces of wood nailed into brick, DELRAY, DEL-RAY , but these doors, too, to these other buildings, they wouldn't open up for us either. So what us brothers did then was, we turned back around and we decided in our heads to head ourselves back downriver. If we started walking along the road that runs its way along the banks of the river, we'd get home before the night began its turning into day. We were walking back this way, back downriver, back toward where we lived in a house with a mother and father inside it, when Brother turned and said that he was tired of all this walking. Would you rather swim back home? was what I said to Brother. Brother said what we both knew, it was too cold for us to be all the way back home in the river swimming. What we need, Brother said, is another boat. I looked at Brother. I nodded with my head at what Brother said. Brother was right. Us brothers, we did need us a boat. It didn't have to be a fancy boat. The dead man's boat, it wasn't a fancy boat. It was a boat that floats is all that it was, a boat that we found washed up on the river's dirty river banks one day when the man that it once belonged to had fallen and drowned when he pissed into the river for luck. What other kind of a boat did brothers like us need? So we started looking with our eyes into the backyards of these unlit houses to see if we could find us a boat to get back on the river. But in the backyards of these houses, houses not far from the banks of the river that runs itself down and through our dirty river town, there were cars rusting in the backyards of these houses—cars with no wheels and cars with the windows in them busted out and cars with weeds as tall as us brothers growing up on all sides so that the cars were hard for us brothers to see. But boats: there were no boats to be seen in these backyards for us brothers to see, no boats for us brothers to get back out on the river, to take us brothers back home. Us brothers, we were standing out on the corner of Jefferson, that road that runs along the river, all the way from the big dirty city back to our dirty river town, when out of the dark, us brothers, we could see the shadow of a man coming on toward us. This man, this shadow, who here in the near river dark did not seem to have a face that us brothers could see, he walked right up to us brothers, as if he knew us, and asked us what were we looking for. Who says we're looking for something, was what Brother's mouth opened itself up to say. When Brother said this to this shadow of a man, this man without a face, I shot Brother th
is look. There was this look that us brothers sometimes liked to look at each other with. It was the kind of a look that actually hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing the looking. Imagine that look. When this man didn't say anything to this, I stepped in front of Brother and said that it's true, we were looking for something. A boat, was what I said into this man's shadowy face. This man, when I said this to his face, the look on his face seemed to lighten. It was like a light winked on when I said the word boat. Then he turned his face away from us brothers and he started walking down along the river. Come, this man said. Stay close. Us brothers, we did what we'd been told. It's true that, us brothers, we'd been told, by our mother and father, like most boys have been told: Don't talk to strangers, don't talk with your mouth full, don't walk into the house with mud on the bottoms of your boots. But us brothers, we weren't the kind of boys who liked to listen to this sort of talk. When we heard our mother say the word don't, us brothers, what we did was, we did. And so, us brothers, we walked in the shadows of this shadowy man, this man whose face was more shadow than it was flesh or even fish. We walked down along the river, past bars with steel bars rusted on the boarded-up windows, past more buildings with the words DELRAY written on their sides. After a while, we found ourselves standing outside the fenced-in yard of a hardware store, its backyard filled with boats. It was a boatyard of boats, this backyard was, and it was, to our eyes, like finding a river in the desert for us to make mud with. Us brothers, with our eyes, we looked and we looked at all of those boats. There were boats made out of steel and boats made of aluminum and boats that were made out of wood. Us brothers, we liked boats made out of wood best because it was hard for us to figure out how a thing made out of steel could float. What, we wondered, kept it from down to the river's bottom sinking? This was something that us brothers, we hadn't yet learned the reason why this was so. So, the man turned and turned his shadow face to ours, which boat would you boys like? There was a wood boat there that looked like it had been painted with mud. Us brothers, we both looked at each other and knew that this boat was made for us. We pointed with our hands toward this mud-colored boat. The man who was more shadow than flesh or fish, he pointed with his hand, he pushed at this fence, and the gate of it swung away from its rusted lock. You boys sure you want that boat? the man asked. You could have any boat here. He waved at them all with his hand as if to say that they were us brothers' boats for us to take. It doesn't have a motor on its back, the man pointed this out. We're sure, we said, and nodded our boy heads. We don't need us a motor for us to get back home, we said. The river will take us where we need to go, we said. Then it's yours, the man said. I'll even help you walk it down to the river. And this, we did. Us brothers, we lifted this boat made out of wood, this boat the color of mud, this boat that almost looked like it might be made out of mud, we held up its back, and the man who was a shadow to us brothers, he lifted this boat up by its front. And then we walked it, like this, this boat, down to the river, down to where the river's edge was a mix of mud and stones and broken slabs of concrete. We set the boat down, there at the river's muddy-watered edge, and got in it. The man with the dark face dug his heels into the mud and pushed us brothers off and out into the river's dark. We paddled with our hands out into the river's swirling current. It was a good current. It wouldn't be long before we drifted ourselves back and to our town. Us brothers, we raised our hands above our boy heads to say to this man goodbye. Thank you, we said with our mouths, but only the river heard this. This man, at us brothers floating away, he raised up his hand at us too. He was a good man, us brothers, we knew. This man, like us brothers did too, he knew a good boat when he saw it. The moon in the sky was now rising up out of the river. This moon, it threw down its rope of moony light but still that man's face was a face that us brothers could not see. We could not see any eyes on that man's shadowy face. We could not see a mouth. His mouth was just a hole in his face that sounds sometimes came out of. Somewhere in there there must have been a tongue, us brothers figured. Unless this man was the father of Boy, that boy who was a brother to nobody, born with a full head of hair but with no tongue on the inside of his mouth. We're going home, was what I said to Brother then, and I turned to look at him in his face. Brother's face, it was a face like mine, a face with a nose and two eyes and a mouth and a chin that sometimes had mud dried on it. It won't be long now, Brother nodded and said. Tomorrow, I said, will be a new day for us, Brother, with a new boat for us brothers to fish from. For this, we had that man, whose face we could not see, whose name we did not ask for or know, to thank. Us brothers, we turned one last time back upriver to wave at this man our thanks. In the moon's rivery light, we could see him walking, this man, out into the river, out onto the river, and the river, it was holding him, this man, up. He did not see us, this man, as he walked and kept on walking on, he did not turn to look our way, until he had walked himself all the way across the river to the river's other side, walking and walking and walking on until there was nothing left on the river for us brothers to see, there was nothing left for us brothers to hear, only the sound that the river sometimes makes when a stone is skipped across it.
