‘You min’ if I try my han’ with these?’ he asked.
‘No, of course not, honey,’ Marsha replied, ‘but can you take them to the cabin and work there? I need to make room for a screen printing machine.’ Bob agreed. The cabin was where Marsha also made him keep his growing collection of barbed wire.
Bob and Marsha’s cabin was located in the remote and jagged landscape of Siskiyou County. Few people lived there, and the likelihood was greater of meeting a black bear or a mountain lion than another person. They would repair here together in the summer months when the climate was warm and dry, and Bob would go there alone in the winter when the snow lay heavy.
Bob carried no illusions that he had conventional artistic abilities. He could neither draw figures nor put landscapes in correct perspective. He did, however, have patience and a steady hand, traits that had made him a valuable and deadly sniper. Oil paint attracted him. He liked its thickness and texture, its malleability. He learned how to mix colours and add flecks to highlight and change an overall effect. On pieces of wood and later canvasses, he would draw thick bands of textured colours juxtaposed against each other, sometimes horizontal, sometimes diagonal and sometimes vertical.
It was the horizontal bands that sparked the idea of The Barbed Wire Flag.
Bob’s interest in barbed wire stemmed from his days working for Morris in the field, scouting rural areas for churchyards and cemeteries. Although he’d known of the existence of barbed wire from his time in the army, he’d never once seen a barbed wire fence until the day a barb caught his pants and ripped open the flesh below. Once the pain had subsided he’d taken a closer look at the wire and become fascinated by its design. On subsequent field expeditions he noticed that the shape of the sharp-edged prongs varied enormously, and concluded that there was more than one signature in play. He decided to start collecting the wire, and later, after he’d started reading for pleasure, bought books on the subject and visited fairs and dealers to add to his collection.
It took Bob almost two working months over a six-month period to perfect the prototype of his Barbed Wire Flag. Once satisfied, he wrapped it in a thick woollen blanket and secured it carefully to the roof of his car. Back in Seattle he placed it on an easel in Marsha’s studio and once again draped the blanket over it. He said nothing to Marsha about it when she returned from the bookstore, but after they’d eaten he took hold of her hand and led her into the studio.
‘I got somethin’ to show you, doll. Somethin’ I been workin’ on. Now close yo’ eyes an’ open ’em only when I says so.’
Marsha smiled and did as instructed.
‘Okay, you can open ’em now.’
When Marsha saw Bob’s creation, she was stunned into silence. The canvas before her was four feet by three feet in size and framed in thick weathered fence wood. It depicted the flag of the United States, its thirteen alternating red and white stripes painted in thick textured oil and separated by twelve strands of antique and rusted barbed wire (Brinkerhoff Face Clamp Barb, Bob would later explain to her). The rectangle, which would have housed the fifty stars, had been rebated by two inches to allow for the insertion of six vertical metal prison bars, and behind the bars, was a grainy photograph of Bob that had been tinted blue and flecked with white.
‘So, what you think, Marsha? I’m callin’ it The Barbed Wire Flag.’
‘I think it’s the saddest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’
Bob looked puzzled. ‘Made me a Barbed Wire Flag, doll. No mo’, no less.’
Marsha wanted to take the piece to a gallery whose owner she knew, but Bob was wary of the idea. Too many people would see his face, and even though Fogerty was now dead he still nursed the paranoia of discovery. He told her that this Barbed Wire Flag was for them only, and that it would hang in the cabin. They could, however, make others, and she could help in their construction. The barred window, he suggested, could be filled with all kinds of icons – images that he could never draw but she could screen print.
Together they made a list of images they would display in the rebated window, and decided that each representation would be replicated fifty times to mirror the number and arrangement of the stars in the real American flag. Each concept would be limited to only ten editions, and each edition would use a different type of barbed wire.
The first image they decided upon was that of an American Indian. The Indians, Bob told Marsha, referred to barbed wire as the Devil’s Rope, because it had excluded them from their traditional hunting lands.
‘How do you know that?’ Marsha asked.
‘I read it in a book, doll,’ he replied.
The second image was that of the buffalo, another native of America almost brought to extinction by its gung-ho settlement.
‘How do you know this?’ Marsha asked.
‘I read it someplace. You oughta try readin’ books yo’self some time,’ he replied.
Later images included a black slave, an atomic mushroom cloud, Che Guevara, a helmeted West Virginian miner, a vulture, a drug death, and the McDonald’s Arches. (Marsha also wanted to include images of bananas, soup cans and Brillo pads, but Bob vetoed these on the grounds that they were derivative. ‘How do you know that?’ Marsha challenged him. ‘I’ve see’d ’em in books,’ Bob replied. ‘Books on yo’ shelves!’)
Marsha left Bob to decide which types of barbed wire they would use for the Flags. After looking through his collection, Bob settled on the Glidden Hanging Barb, the Glidden Large Square Strand, the Knickerbocker Applied Three Point Barb, the Merrill Four Point Twirl, the Kelly Thorny Common, the Hodge Spur Rowel on Large and Small Strands, the Cady Barbed Link, the Jayne and Hill Locked Staples and Wood Block, and the Brinkerhoff Opposed Lugs Lance Point.
They formed a limited company called Rainy Day Sneakers, to which all expenses were charged and all monies paid. It was decided that the artwork would be signed TT Hancock, and that Marsha would be the public face of both the company and the artwork; as always, Bob would remain in the background, in comfortable shadow.
Rainy Day Sneakers took off like a rocket and Marsha stopped working at the bookstore. After the initial launch of The Barbed Wire Flags in the bayside community of Sausalito, galleries vied with each other to represent Bob and Marsha’s work. The Flags sold for thousands of dollars each. People waited patiently on lists and bought sight unseen. Bob and Marsha moved into a bigger house in Seattle and had the cabin extended. Life for both of them was good – and always for the better when Doc came to visit.
Although Marsha was educated to a high standard herself, she was surprised that Bob had any other friend so educated. Wrongly, she presumed that any friend of Bob’s was more likely to be a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks than an actual university. That Bob’s closest friend was also a general practitioner confused her even more.
Marsha hated visiting doctors, and the idea of a doctor visiting them slightly concerned her. Meeting Doc, however, had been a pleasant surprise. He didn’t look like a doctor, didn’t talk like a doctor and was completely unaware of himself. His history was with Bob, but he made a point of making her a part of their present. They grew comfortable around each other, and Marsha was pleased when Doc started to tease her the same way he teased Bob. She thought it a genuine pity that these two men in her life had been unable to spend more time of their own lives together.
Circumstances, however, had prevented this from happening, and for many years Doc and Bob’s relationship was necessarily one of long distance. They had communicated solely by letter and phone, and met only after Fogerty – Bob’s nemesis – had died. At first they rendezvoused in anonymous cities, but then, as their confidence grew, in their respective homes. It was during a visit to the Klamath Mountains retreat that Bob presented Doc with The Barbed Wire Flag that Nancy had admired. In the rebated rectangle were fifty identical images of a cadaver.
There had been one visit by Bob, however, of wh
ich Doc was still unaware: to the funerals of Beth and Esther. At the time of their deaths, Bob had been afraid of exposing either his grieving friend or himself to discovery, and had therefore felt unable to attend the service. He had, however, been there, and, as at his own funeral, in the background. He’d watched as the mourners filed into the church, the limousines arrive and Doc and his family step into view. He’d looked on helplessly as the two coffins were unloaded from the hearse and Doc, his father’s arm around him, followed them into the church. His friend had looked a broken man. He’d wanted to run to him, hold him close and tell him it would be okay – but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Instead, he’d stayed where he was, silent and unmoving, his head bowed in prayer. Only after the coffins had been taken from the church to the crematorium, did Bob take his own leave and head back to Seattle.
‘Who’s Nancy?’ Marsha asked. ‘I don’t remember you ever mentioning her.’
Doc had phoned, suggesting he and Nancy pay them a visit.
‘An ol’ friend o’ mine he dated back when he was at Duke. ’Bout tore him up when she left him, an’ then, outta the blue she phones him. You’ll like her, Marsha. Nancy wouldn’ stand fo’ any o’ my shit neither! Ha!’
Deterioration
Doc and Nancy’s trip to Seattle didn’t take place. Shortly before its due date Doc caught pneumonia and, afterwards, suffered an endless series of complications. Simultaneously, Nancy’s life also became more complicated. Areas of her brain progressively shrank, and the cells located there were ransacked. Slight memory loss became severe memory loss, and minor confusions, significant. Though faces and objects remained familiar, their names escaped her. She came to forget her address and phone number, lose track of where she put things and invariably find her car keys in the microwave oven. She drove not knowing why she was driving or where she’d intended driving to; lost her bearings easily and failed to recognise once familiar landmarks. Eventually, she stopped driving, sold the car and very soon forgot how to drive.
Money, in value and amount, now confused her. Shop assistants would help her count the dollars and cents she’d take from her purse, and with varying degrees of patience explain that prices had changed considerably since 1972. Nancy also began to confuse the hours of the day with the hours of the night, and would often phone Doc at four in the morning; every day of the week became a Sunday to her, the dead day of the week when nothing ever happens.
As the past grew in importance, recent events and the present became meaningless. In Nancy’s altered state of mind, Ruby and her parents came back to life. She’d prepare meals for them and wonder why they never arrived to eat them; stand for hour after hour at the window or on the front porch waiting for their cars to turn into the driveway. Often, she’d look at herself in the mirror and wonder who the old woman staring back at her was; certainly not the young Nancy Travis she imagined herself to be.
Nancy’s pride in her appearance evaporated. There came a time when she rarely combed her hair or brushed her teeth. Her dress sense and colour co-ordination disappeared, and on a cold winter’s day she would as likely be clothed in a light summer’s dress as a thick woollen sweater. Eventually she started to smell of urine, and so too did the house.
The stays Doc made with her became longer and more fraught: her restlessness, the way she anxiously clasped and unclasped her hands, her habit of pacing rooms, trying doorknobs and endlessly bending to pick imaginary pieces of lint from the carpet. She’d agitate easily and, on occasion, become aggressive; she’d shout at Doc, sometimes scream at him to take his goddamn hands off her! Towards the end of the period he visited her in Hershey – and while paying a visit to the bathroom – Nancy mistook him for a night-time prowler and hit him over the head with a baseball bat. Recovering in hospital the next day, fresh stitches in the back of his head, Doc reluctantly judged that their time to travel to Coffeeville was approaching.
By the time Doc celebrated his seventy-second birthday, he had already decided on a plan of action. Ideally, he would have preferred to have driven Nancy to Coffeeville, but his failing eyesight made such a long journey impossible. Although nervous of taking Nancy on any form of public transport, he’d decided they would fly from Harrisburg to Philadelphia and then take another flight to Memphis; there he would hire a car and drive the remaining distance. Within days of his birthday, however, he was forced to abandon such ideas and think again: Nancy had been admitted to the secure wing of a nursing home.
It transpired that Nancy had set out from her house one evening and left the front door wide open. She’d passed through the streets of her own neighbourhood unnoticed, walked along East Caracas Avenue and down Para Avenue until she came to Hwy 422, one of the town’s main arteries. Instead of turning left, which would have taken her to the centre of Hershey, she’d headed east in the direction of Lancaster and Reading. As she tramped unsteadily down the hard shoulder of the road and alongside the Spring Creek Golf Course, she’d been spotted by a passing police car. The cruiser pulled over and its driver climbed out, adjusting his hat and taking the precaution of unclasping his holster.
Immediately, he’d discerned Nancy’s distress, but had been unable to calm her. Just as Nancy could make little sense of the world she now lived in, neither could the policeman make any sense of Nancy’s: she didn’t know where she was or where she lived, what day it was or what time of day it was. All she could tell him was that her name was Nancy Travis and that she was looking for her parents. The policeman had coaxed her into the back of his cruiser with the promise of helping her find them. Why he thought they’d be found in a police station, Nancy never fully understood, but together they searched for them there the rest of the evening.
As Nancy had no purse or form of identification on her, and the police could find no record of a Nancy Travis living in Hershey, she was detained at the station overnight. It was only after a neighbour phoned the following morning to report an open front door that her true identity became known. Her own doctor was on vacation at the time, and the practice administrator revealed to the police that her next of kin was listed as Brandon Travis, a resident of Clarksdale, Mississippi. (Nancy had always intended replacing Brandon’s name with Doc’s, but too late: Brandon was the person the police contacted.)
On hearing the news, and unaware he was no longer a beneficiary of Nancy’s will, three like fruits lined up in Brandon’s slot machine mind, and he started to imagine the dollar coins that would soon be tumbling his way. He told the police it would take him time to re-arrange his schedule and scrape together the necessary bus fare to Hershey, but that until he could get there, they should put his sister in a nursing home. He explained to them that although Nancy had money, he didn’t want them putting her anywhere fancy.
‘I’m glad he’s not my next of kin,’ the policeman, who’d made the call to Brandon, said to a colleague. He then checked her into the fanciest secure unit he could find.
Doc knew he had to think fast. Once a person got caught up in the care system, extrication was no easy matter; next-of-kin pulled the strings and well-meaning friends counted for nothing. He had to get her out of there, and quickly.
Fortuitously, on the same day he heard from Nancy’s next-door neighbour, he also received a phone call from his godson, and a new plan started to shape in his mind.
The next day, he flew to Pennsylvania and went in search of Nancy. The neighbour, who’d reported her missing to the police and her detention to Doc, was helpful. A close friend of Nancy herself, she told Doc she knew the whereabouts of the Nursing Home but not its name. She drew a map and asked him to give Nancy her love. ‘Tell her I’ll be along to visit as soon as I can.’ Doc thanked her and climbed back into his rental, declining the cup of coffee she’d offered. The directions were easy to follow and he drove there directly. ‘God in Heaven!’ he exclaimed out loud when he read the name of the retirement centre: Oaklands!
The Oaklands Retirement Community had been in existence for ten years, and was the
creation of a syndicate of doctors motivated by profit. Their initial idea had been to provide independent living in a communal atmosphere for senior citizens who were lonely, frail or tired of doing chores. Necessarily, their intended clientele had also to be wealthy, as the rents charged for the one- and two-bedroom apartments in the community’s three storey building were high and increased yearly.
The doctors’ intention had been to keep fee-paying customers – or cash cows, as they occasionally referred to them – in the community for as long as possible – ideally, until the day they died. They found, however, that despite their best efforts to maintain the mental health of the people they cared for, they were fighting a losing battle against the waves of dementia that crashed on to the shores of old age and pounded their residents’ brains into mush. They lost residents to Alzheimer’s, to vascular dementia, to Fronto-temporal dementia, to Binswanger’s disease and occasionally to dementia with Lewy bodies. The inevitable transfer of such valuable assets to outside specialist facilities threatened to undermine the community’s business model, and it was then that the doctors decided to build and open their own dementia care amenity: The Assisted Living Community – or Secure Unit, as it came to be called.
The plan worked: not only did the new unit plug a potential hole in the community’s finances, but actually boosted them by allowing the facility to tap into a new, lucrative and ever-expanding market – dementia care. In-house guests who succumbed to the disease were no longer transferred to outside institutions, but simply wheeled – with a minimum of fuss – from one community building to another. There, they joined patients from other retirement communities unable to provide a similar service.
Last Bus to Coffeeville Page 15
