He knew he should have acted sooner, taken Nancy to Coffeeville months ago and been truer to his word. It was what Nancy had asked him to do, and that he hadn’t done so was down to his own selfishness: he hadn’t wanted to lose her again – however imperfect she might be. She now hovered on the brink of being lost to herself and to all those around her; it was what she’d always dreaded, and he couldn’t help but feel he’d failed her.
He got a tissue and brought it to her. Nancy sat up and moved her legs off the bed and dabbed at her eyes. Doc picked up her hairbrush and ran it through her flattened hair, and then stepped back to take a good look at her. ‘Good as new,’ he said. He then popped a couple of pills from their securing foil. ‘Take these, Nancy: they’ll make you feel better; get rid of those butterflies.’ Nancy put them in her mouth and washed them down with water from a bedside glass.
‘Everything’s so muddled, Gene. Sometimes I think my parents are alive and other times I’m not sure. Are they alive? Is that why we’re going to Coffeeville?’
‘Your parents were good people, Nancy, but they’ve left us now. A part of them lives on in you – and that’s the way it should be – but it would be selfish and cruel of us to expect them to be alive still. You’ll bump into their memories in Coffeeville though, and that’s something to look forward to. Even though you won’t see them, they’ll be close by.’
‘You won’t ever leave me, will you, Gene? You’ll always stay with me?’
‘Always, Nancy – wherever you go, I’ll go.’
‘You’re a good person, Gene. What did I do to deserve you? I hope someday you’ll be rewarded.’
‘I’m not sure about either of those things, Nancy, but you can reward me now with a smile.’
Nancy obliged and then took hold of his hand and walked with him to the dining table. ‘Just like old times,’ Doc thought to himself, remembering the evenings they’d walked down the stairs at Oaklands together.
‘It’s lasagne,’ Merritt announced, in case it wasn’t obvious from the food’s appearance. ‘Pass your plates and then help yourselves to salad.’
‘Don’t give Nancy a big piece,’ Doc said. ‘Her appetite’s not up to much these days.’
‘Too late, Gene, but she’s welcome to leave anything she can’t eat – I won’t be offended. If you leave food on your plate though, I might well be.’
It was halfway through the meal when Eric started to whisper to Jack. ‘No whispering at the table, young man,’ Nancy scolded. ‘It’s bad manners!’
‘Sorry, Mrs Skidmore.’
‘What did you say, anyway?’ Jack asked him. ‘I didn’t catch it.’ Eric mumbled something while keeping his eyes firmly on the table. ‘I didn’t catch that, either,’ Jack said. ‘You’ll have to speak up.’
‘One of Mr Crow’s ears is missing,’ Eric said in a loud voice.
Merritt’s hand immediately went to the side of his head. ‘Nobody move! I’ll explain later.’ Nobody did move: they were stunned into immobility. Nancy was the first to speak.
‘Oh my God, Gene, the man’s got leprosy!’
‘Nonsense, Nancy. Crawford might have horseshit on its streets, but I doubt it has an outbreak of leprosy. Let’s wait for Merritt to explain.’
Nancy wasn’t so easily convinced and spat the food in her mouth on to the table. Doc used his napkin to wipe it up, while Merritt crawled around on his hands and knees looking for his ear.
‘Got it!’ he exclaimed from the kitchen. ‘All the steam must have weakened the glue. Excuse me a minute, will you?’ He then disappeared into the bathroom and emerged a few minutes later with two ears. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It happens sometimes, but fortunately not too often. I’ll explain…’ He picked up his fork and ate while he spoke, unwilling for the food on his plate to go cold.
‘Do you remember the last words you said to me when you left Crawford, T-Bone?’
‘Who’s T-Bone?’ Nancy asked.
‘Otis,’ Eric said.
‘Bob,’ Doc clarified.
‘My las’ words?’ Bob asked. ‘How I suppose’ to remem’er what I said forty years ago? I’m guessin’ I said somethin’ like goodbye.’
‘Your last words were Get that lump on your neck seen to and I should have listened to you. At the time I thought it was a sebaceous cyst, but it turned out to be Hodgkin’s disease, and by the time it was diagnosed the cancer had spread to my ear. The chemo got rid of the cancer but they had to amputate my ear. They made me a new one out of rubber. I take it off at nights and stick it back on with theatrical glue in the morning. Nowadays they do things differently, put in a titanium implant and attach the ear to it, but I can’t be bothered going through another operation at my age. Rubber and glue does for me.’
‘Why didn’t you say somethin’, man? You shoulda said.’
‘Why? What good would it have done? I wasn’t going to die and you had your own life to sort out. Cancer’s a conversation stopper, and I didn’t want people phoning me up the whole time and fumbling for words.’
‘Is that what the packet’s all ’bout?’ Bob asked.
‘In a way. If I ever need to have chemo again – and the chances are that I will – then it comes in handy: counteracts some of the side effects. Chemo’s brutal, man. It works, but it takes a lot of the good life out of you at the same time.’
‘Thank goodness it was only cancer,’ Nancy said, picking up her fork again. ‘I thought you had leprosy.’
‘I already told you, Nancy,’ Doc said. ‘You can’t get leprosy in this country.’
‘You can if you eat the ends of bananas,’ Eric said. ‘My daddy told me so, and Mr Annandale told him.’
Open Mike’s Open Mic
Jack decided to stay and play Monopoly with Eric, and Doc and Bob went to the town’s open mic event by themselves. The event was held in one of Crawford’s larger bars close to the country store, and by the time Doc and Bob arrived there the room was already starting to fill. They sat down at a table and ordered beers from a waitress. Alexx was sitting at a table close by and waved to Bob when she saw him. Open Mike stood at the far end of the room, tapping the microphone with a ballpoint pen and checking that the sound system was in good working order.
Mike Calhoun – or Open Mike as people called him – had left school at the age of eighteen and gone to work at the town’s one and only gas station. He’d had no interest in going to college and, if he had gone, would have had little idea of what to study. His one interest in life was gasoline, and from an early age had been intent on forging a career in petrol pump attendancy.
After twenty years of pumping gas, Mike unexpectedly inherited the gas station from its owner, and welcomed this new responsibility. He painted the outside of the station, white-walled the curbs surrounding the pumps, hung baskets of flowers and hoisted an American flag. He placed a bench by the door to encourage people to sit for a while – customers and non-customers – and started to stock soft drinks, confectionery and cigarettes. He didn’t have the capital to upgrade the pumps or the underground tanks, but he ensured they remained in good working condition. With time, the gas station became fashionably retro in appearance, and Mike contributed to the old-fashioned feel by continuing to give a full service: he put gas into the tank of every car that rolled on to its forecourt, checked oil levels and washed windscreens.
When he was thirty-nine, Mike married a girl he’d been dating on-and-off since the age of sixteen. Her name was Josie. It took twenty-three years and Mike’s inheritance of the gas station for her to fall in love with him, but only three months of marriage to fall right back out again. In truth, Mike had always been her fall-back position, someone she was prepared to settle for if no better offers came her way. No better offers did, and when the alarm bell on her biological clock started to ring, and it looked as if Mike might have prospects after all, she agreed to marry him.
Josie conceived almost immediately and, thereafter, had no further use for Mike. The smell of
gasoline that permeated his pores began to irritate her, and she resented his refusal to shower when he came home from work. Mike insisted that one shower a day was sufficient for any person, and that two would only deplete the natural oils in his body. ‘Suit yourself,’ Josie had said to him one day; ‘but if you ever go up like a torch when I light a cigarette, I don’t want anyone blaming me!’ The marriage ended in Portland, the same day Mike met Alexx.
Mike Calhoun had lived and breathed gasoline fumes his entire adult life, and it was thought by some that the fumes had addled his brain – why else would anyone tell everyone his confidential business? Whatever the reason, Mike was a man who navel-gazed into his soul on a daily basis and usually came up with a medical condition, which he would then share with all and sundry. From the verruca on his foot to the lichen planus on his tongue, from the polyps in his urethra to the sebaceous growths on his torso, the whole town was intimate with Mike’s intermittent medical problems. Most would avoid getting entangled in such conversations and simply say: ‘Sorry to hear that Mike. Hope it clears up soon.’
There were a few, however, who would gladly discuss these ailments with him, and share ailments of their own. The man he’d told about his jock itch, for instance, had commented that if that was the sum total of his worries, then he was a lucky man indeed; he personally had the seven-year itch and that was far worse. It was the wrong thing to have told Mike. When the man’s wife came to fuel her car the following week, Mike asked her how her husband’s seven-year itch was coming along. ‘It’s just about to come to an end,’ she’d said abruptly, and then driven off with the gas nozzle still attached to the car.
Despite such unintentional indiscretions, Open Mike was a popular man in town. People felt safe and comfortable around him, as they would any person they felt superior to, and when it came to finding someone to host a proposed open mic event, his was the name mentioned by most. He had a nice sounding voice, a relaxed and easy manner and, moreover, an interest in poetry – or at least words that rhymed. Mike liked words, wrote them down and then listed other words that were similar sounding. Two words, however, continued to confound him: orange and silver; he could find no words that rhymed with either.
Mike could never write poetry, but he admired those people who did, and eventually came to appreciate even poetry that didn’t rhyme. He was happy to accept the position of emcee and under his tutelage the open mic for writers and poets became a popular monthly event.
The theme of the open mic that evening was poetry of fifty words or fewer.
‘Hi folks and welcome. It’s good to see so many of you here tonight, and I can guarantee you that you won’t go home disappointed. We’ve got a great line-up, but before we get things started there are a couple of notices.
‘There’s a new exhibition of paintings by Evelyn Tate opening at the Brick Factory next week, and let me tell you these things are works of beauty – especially when you consider that Evelyn’s arthritis means she can’t hold a brush anymore and has to paint with her knuckles.
‘Second one is to alert you to the fact that Dave Palmer’s coming to town this weekend and he’ll be playing right here on Saturday night. Dave believes that only innovation and self-expression can ensure the survival of traditional American music, and to this end he’ll be playing many of his favourite nineteenth century banjo pieces on a moog synthesiser. Something to look forward to, I think.
‘On a personal note, you might remember me mentioning to some of you that I’d been noticing traces of blood in my morning stools and was concerned that I might have bowel cancer. Well I’m glad to say that I haven’t, and all the tests came back clear. It seems my haemorrhoids were playing up and I should have been using the ointment on a more regular basis.’
A big cheer came from the floor and Mike smiled. ‘Okay everyone, I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s time to simmer down and bring on our first reader. First up, we’ve got Chuck Harrison and his poem’s entitled Caroline. There was a murmur of apprehension in the audience as Chuck took to the small stage: he and his wife, Caroline, had recently divorced, and Caroline was sitting in the room with her new beau.
You use people, you used me
you use the dead, your family
You take from strangers, you take from friends
you take from women, you take from men
You need Valium, you need drink
you need guidance, you need a shrink
you think in mono, you talk shit
you’re all ass, you’re all tit
The uncomfortable silence at the poem’s end was broken by Caroline. ‘That’s fifty-four words, Chuck. Never could get things right, could you?’ There was a muffle of repressed laughter and Mike hurried to take the microphone from Chuck.
‘Bad luck, Chuck,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid that disqualifies you on this occasion, but keep the poems coming.’ Chuck walked off the stage and made for the exit. ‘Bitch!’ he said to Caroline as he brushed past her.
Mike looked at his notes and then called Cheryl Nelson to the platform. Cheryl was an active member of the local church and had just celebrated her twenty-second birthday. Her poem was entitled Things Go Better with Coca-Cola
Christ in the ruins of our love
of possessions and concessions
to ourselves
Smile down at the wounds in your flesh
and muse:
would things have gone better
without Coca-Cola?
Again, the audience applauded. ‘That’s a deep one, Cheryl,’ Mike said. ‘I think you’ve given us all something to think about there!’
Doc drained his glass and gestured for the waitress to bring refills.
Meanwhile, Mike was introducing Kurt Wolfe, an artist who’d recently returned from a year in Nepal after suffering a nervous breakdown. ‘Kurt’s going to read two poems tonight. I know this is unusual, but they’re both very short and it would be a waste of time me sitting down if he just read the one. Kurt tells me that Nepal taught him the virtues of minimalism, so let’s see what he’s got in store for us tonight.’
Kurt stepped to the microphone, closed his eyes and remained silent for a minute. He then opened his eyes and started to shout:
KATHMANDU
DOGMANDON’T
There was a momentary silence while the audience waited for Kurt to continue. When he didn’t, and it became apparent that the poem had ended, they broke into polite, if puzzled, applause.
‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ Kurt said. ‘You’ve given me a lot. The second poem I want to read is called Punctuated Free Love. It came to me while I was visiting the source of the Bagmati River close to Bagdwaar. There was a dead goat in the water.’
Comma sutra
Period missed
Pause pregnant
Mike had never heard such balderdash and neither had most of the other people in the room. It seemed that Nepal had done Kurt no good at all. ‘Thanks, thanks Kurt,’ he stammered. ‘Let’s hear it for Kurt, everybody; it’s good to have him home.’ In turn, Kurt thanked Mike and kissed him on both cheeks.
‘We’ll take a short break,’ Mike announced, slightly nonplussed. ‘Stretch your legs, use the bathrooms and order more drinks. We’ll be starting back in fifteen minutes.’
‘How ’bout we get us a cigarette, Gene?’ Bob suggested, and the two of them left their table and joined the one other person in Crawford who still smoked. ‘This is a hoot, man. Glad we come?’
‘I am. It’s a pity Jack didn’t come with us. He’d have enjoyed this – and for all the wrong reasons, too.’
‘I hated po’try at school; al’ays thought that it was drug addicts or gays what wrote it. I don’t think that now, though. After tonight, I know buffoons can write it, too. Ha!’
A woman came to the door and announced they were ready to start. While Bob bought more beer, Doc sat at the table casting furtive glances in Caroline’s direction.
‘You twice her age, man,’ Bob s
aid when he returned to the table. ‘You should be ’shamed o’ yo’self.’
Doc ignored him, thankful that Open Mike had taken to the platform again. Another fifteen poems were read that evening, but only Alexx’s resonated with Doc and Bob.
Alexx told the audience that her poem had been written as a tribute to Mike – the love of her life, and a man who still made her weak at the knees.
Oh my love, you’re so lovely
and I my love am so ugly
In your presence I feel small
my nerves cause me to feel sick
I want to vomit
all over your carpet
A tear came to Mike’s eye when he heard the poem and the two of them embraced. The room erupted into cheers and wolf whistles, fortunately sufficient in decibel to hide the roars of laughter coming from Doc and Bob.
‘Place smells good!’ Bob said. ‘I’m fig’rin’ you got yo’ rum buns made.’
Merritt smiled. ‘Nancy did good, Gene. Best damn rum buns I’ve tasted.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, Merritt. How was Nancy?’
‘She was fine. Turns out we both have a common interest in memory loss, but a total recall of growing up in the 1950s. We spent the evening down memory lane and had us a ball.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s getting ready to turn in.’ On hearing that, Doc excused himself and went to check on her.
‘So where’s my rum bun? You saved me one, right?’ Bob asked.
Merritt looked uncomfortable at the question and didn’t answer immediately. ‘We ate them all,’ Eric said. ‘Mrs Skidmore said they had to be eaten fresh or not at all.’
‘Sorry,’ Merritt said. ‘I was going to save you one, but they were just too damned good.’
‘How many Nancy make?’ Bob asked.
‘Ten,’ Eric said.
‘An’ the four o’ you ate all ten of ’em! I cain’t believe it.’
Last Bus to Coffeeville Page 35
