by Linda Berry
“Do you think he’ll do better at the ranch? You don’t have time to take care of a disabled man. Cooking, cleaning up after him, managing his meds.”
“You should both be at the ranch. Dad would be more comfortable there.”
“Michael, don’t try to fix this. You can’t.” She released a long, controlled breath. “If you insist on getting him out of there today, it’s best he stays here. It’ll give you time to prepare the house. You’ll need to build a ramp up to the porch and put hand bars in the bathroom.”
Of course, she was right. It never occurred to him to make changes to the house.
“I’ll move some of this stuff out of the way,” she said.
“I’ll do it. What goes first?”
“Everything in the living room. Put it in the garage. And clear out the guest room for your father.”
Sully made quick work of emptying the rooms with the hand truck and organizing the boxes in the garage so his mother could easily access them.
“I’ll be back soon,” he told her when he finished. He tucked Butch under one arm, hugged Ronnie goodbye, and walked out into the falling snow. His truck was camouflaged in white. He dropped Butch onto the passenger seat and revved up the engine.
Shaking from cold or fear, Butch peered up at him through gaps in his tangled hair. “Man, you need a haircut. Marine style. Oh, hell.” Sully cranked up the heat and pulled Butch onto his lap. He stroked the little tangled head. Butch licked the top of his hand. Oddly, the pipsqueak dog had a calming effect on him. Sully glanced back toward the house and shook his head, puzzled by his mom’s behavior.
Butch lowered his eyes in a Zen-like state of meditation.
“Give me some life direction, Yoda. I could use it.”
Butch tilted his head to one side, lifted his ears, and released a chorus of little yelps.
“Yeah, I know. You’re receiving instructions from the mother ship. Too bad I don’t understand dog speak.” Feeling as though he was swimming upstream, Sully headed for St. Mary’s Convalescent Haven, his tires forging tracks in the pristine snow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Get that pig slop outta my face!”
Though the words were slurred, Sully recognized the gravelly tone of his father’s voice. He quickened his steps on the polished linoleum in the sterile hallway.
“I’ll force this down your throat, if I have to,” came a gruff voice with a Mexican accent.
Sully paused in the doorway, taking in the scene. A muscular nurse’s aide stood over the bed holding a spoon in front of his father’s face. His other hand held Joe’s wrists down on the tray table in a vise-like grip. Joe’s lips were compressed into a hard line; his blue eyes shooting sparks.
“Get the hell away from my dad,” Sully growled.
The aide shot Sully a startled look, stepped back from the bed, and crossed his beefy arms over his chest. Sully recognized old gang tattoos on his hands and neck.
Joe’s eyes blinked hard. “Sully …” A raspy croak. His mouth formed words but no sound came out.
Sully crossed the room, swept aside the tray table, and folded Joe in his arms. He had waited a long six months for this moment, to make sure his dad was okay. He felt his father’s bony ribcage through the pajama top. The scent of medicated soap didn’t hide the musty odor of an old man who rarely met fresh air face-to-face. Pulling away, Sully hid his astonishment. This was no longer the strapping, rugged man Sully had seen on leave fifteen months ago. Joe had shed a good thirty pounds, his dark hair had silvered, his once iron-hard muscles felt like putty, and his perpetually tanned face was gaunt and pale. He looked a decade older than his sixty years. Only his intense blue eyes were unchanged, now staring at Sully in wonder.
Sully noticed bruises on his father’s wrists. Other forced feedings? “You’re shrinking, Dad.” Sully scowled at the nurse’s aide.
The man glared back. “You saw for yourself, he refuses to eat.”
“Get me outta this hellhole,” Joe said fiercely. The right side of his mouth drooped and spit foamed in the corner. He nodded toward a wheelchair against the wall. “That’s mine.”
“Help me get his things together,” Sully said sharply.
“You can’t just take him out of here,” the aide said.
“Try stopping me.”
The man’s hard expression withered. He lurched into motion, helping Joe peel off his pajamas and worm into a pair of baggy gray sweats.
“My suitcase is under the bed,” Joe said, wiping drool from his mouth, his excitement palpable.
With a couple sweeps of his arm, Sully emptied his father’s drawers and closet. He collected toiletries from the bathroom and packed everything easily into a weathered suitcase that still bore faded rodeo decals. In minutes, his father’s presence was stripped from a room designed for interchangeable people who came to rehabilitate or die. “Where’re his meds?”
“Front desk.” Glowering, the aide finished tying Joe’s shoes, then stormed out.
His father’s left arm and leg were spindly and weak and he looked shrunken in his clothes. Sully supported his weight until his body sagged into the wheelchair. With the suitcase balanced across Joe’s bony knees, Sully wheeled him down the hallway. Joe’s big-knuckled hands clutched the sides of the suitcase, and his head bobbed with the motion of the chair. The back of his hair was matted from months of lying on a pillow. Recalling Joe’s almost supernatural strength and endurance, Sully felt a piercing sorrow. What happened to Joe Sullivan, former world champion bareback rider and rodeo legend?
At the front desk, a nurse with a sour expression was placing a dozen prescription bottles into a plastic bag. Sully fought down a feeling of dread. The hard reality of what he was doing struck him with sudden force. “You got my dad on all that stuff?”
“Yes. Doctor’s orders.” She pursed her lips, shot him a scornful glance. “You understand we can’t be responsible for what happens to him once he leaves the premises?”
Sully nodded.
“Please sign these papers.” She shoved forms across the counter.
Sully hesitated.
“Sign the damn things,” Joe barked, spit flying.
Sully scrawled his signature on each page then folded his copies into a square small enough to fit into his breast pocket. He gripped the chair’s rubber handles and pushed it out of the lobby into the brisk March air. Falling snow had softened the edges of the world with a layer of white. Sully removed his hat and settled it on his father’s head.
Joe flashed him a crooked grin. He inhaled deeply. “Damn, it feels good to get that hospital stink out of my nose.”
Sully felt the same way. Both men filled their lungs, breathing out smoky vapor. As the wheels of the chair squeaked through the snow in the parking lot, Sully felt sharp pinpricks of remorse. His mom was right. Joe was unable to care for himself. Sully would have to be his nurse, housemaid, and cook. His newfound freedom faded into visions of dark shadows. Working out the logistics of getting Joe into the cab gave him a taste of what lay ahead. White-hot pain shot up his arm as he half lifted, half pushed Joe into the passenger seat. Clearly, a pickup wasn’t a good vehicle for transporting a disabled man. Breathing hard, Sully folded the wheelchair into the back seat and joined his father up front. Butch was licking Joe’s face like a bear on a honeycomb.
“You missed your ol’ man, didn’t you, lil’ fella?” Joe grinned. “You need a haircut. You look like a haystack after a windstorm. You should see ’im when he’s groomed. Looks like a show dog.”
They didn’t need a high-maintenance dog at the ranch but Sully was grateful to see his father smiling. That alone earned Butch his keep. As they pulled out of the lot, Joe rolled down the window, stuck out his head, and whooped a high-pitched rodeo yell, showing fiery sparks of his former self.
Sully grinned. “It’s liberation day, Dad! Yee haw!”
“I’ll shoot myself before I step into another nursing home,” Joe said, rolling up the window, hi
s hair wind tousled.
“Come on, Dad. Aren’t you gonna miss the sponge baths?”
He gave Sully a steely look. “They were given by Frank, the asshole you just met.” Joe seemed to see Sully for the first time. “You look good, boy. The best damn thing I’ve seen since I first laid eyes on your mother.” Joe shook his head, looking a bit dazed by the swiftness of events. “Thought you weren’t coming till next week. How long you been here?”
“Couple days.”
“How’s the ranch?”
“Travis did a good job looking out for the place. You, on the other hand, look like crap. We need to fatten you up. Get you back in the saddle.”
“Amen to that. We can start right now. Pull into that driveway right there, son. Let’s get us some real food.”
Sully braked, pulled into the lot of McGilly’s Barbeque, and got in line at the drive-through. The snow suddenly turned into a legitimate hailstorm and white balls pinged off the hood like marbles. Oregon hail could appear out of nowhere and sweep in and out of the area in minutes, even on a hot summer day. It had ruined many a flower garden, to Ronnie’s despair.
“After we get our food, I want you to take me to see your mom.”
“She said the same thing.”
“She wants to see me?” Joe’s voice faltered.
Sully gave him a sharp look and glanced away, alarmed. The old man’s eyes were watering. In his entire life, he’d rarely seen Joe shed a tear. Sully use to tell his friends his dad was made of barbed wire and dried rattlesnake gut, and was just as tough. Over the course of his childhood, when he and his dad were in the arena training, Joe had been all fire and brimstone. Rodeo was his religion and he made it Sully’s religion too. He had no patience for whining or any show of weakness. Sully’s many injuries, sustained from flying off a bronc and hitting the dirt, had been met with cold contempt. To this day, Joe’s stern voice echoed in Sully’s head. “Get your behind back in that saddle, boy. No quitting. When you hammer steel, it only gets harder.” Like the tip of a spear pressing against his back, Joe’s unrelenting toughness pushed Sully steadily up the ranks until he reached number two bareback rider in the world—a feat Joe always expected, and Sully faithfully delivered. Failure was unacceptable. It showed weakness of character. Now Joe was showing weakness. The stroke had somehow changed him. Sully didn’t know what to make of it.
Outside the hail let up as quickly as it started and was replaced by snow, heavier now. The two men sat motionless in the sudden silence, watching large flakes layer the windshield.
“It’s our turn,” Joe said, gesturing with his hand, his voice back to normal.
Sully put on the wipers, drove up to a big plastic chicken, and rolled down his window.
“Get the king-size dinner special,” Joe instructed.
“We’ll take the king-size special,” Sully said to the chicken.
“With extra mashed potatoes and gravy,” Joe added. “And plenty of biscuits and butter.”
“Pop, why don’t you just order?”
“With extra mashed potatoes and gravy,” Joe yelled, slurring. “And plenty of biscuits and butter. And extra wings.”
Sully said to the chicken, “You get all that?”
“Yep.”
“Throw in a pie,” Joe yelled. “Apple.”
“That’ll be thirty-two sixty-five. Pay at the window.”
Sully rolled up the window. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Dad, about Mom—”
“Can’t wait to see her,” Joe cut in. They were still two cars back. “When’s our dang food coming up?”
“Soon. How come Mom never visited you?”
Joe’s bony shoulders sagged and he slumped lower in his seat. “Ain’t her fault. It’s mine.”
Sully waited.
Joe cleared his throat. “That compulsive thing she’s got, it’s worse. She hasn’t left her house since I got the stroke.”
Sully digested the news. “Even to run errands?”
“Nope. Almost losing me, she says, pushed her over the edge. The world outside her door don’t feel safe no more. There’s a name for it. Agri … goria …”
“Agoraphobia.”
“That’s it. With you fighting a war in some dang foreign country and me half crippled, your mom’s had plenty to worry about.”
Recalling his impatience with Ronnie that morning, Sully felt a sudden rush of guilt. He’d heard about vets who had agoraphobia, a spin-off of PTSD. Prone to terrifying panic attacks, and fearing a meltdown in public, they never left the safety of home. “It often goes hand in hand with OCD.”
“What?”
“Obsessive compulsive disorder. Obsessive behavior, like washing your hands dozens of times a day. Or collecting things, like Mom does.” Sully tried to understand his mother’s altered view of the world. He thought of the neatly stacked boxes, the perfectly fitted colored labels, the careful documentation of magazines and newspaper articles. Unable to control events outside her door, it seemed Ronnie had resorted to controlling the little universe inside her house—barricading herself in a bomb shelter of information. “Mom had no choice,” he thought out loud. “Mom couldn’t visit you.”
“Nope. She couldn’t.” Joe wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Our lives weren’t supposed to turn out this way. We all worked hard. Put money into the ranch, put savings in the bank. We should be set … but now my medical bills …” He looked down at his fingers tightly twisting Butch’s fur and blinked back tears.
Jesus. “Dad, I’m home now. We’ll get it all worked out,” Sully said in a confident tone, though anxiety thrashed in his chest like a large bird trapped in a small cage. The ranch was mired in debt. It was going to be mostly on him to pull them out. What if he fell short? What if they lost their home?
“Me and your mom, we talk every day,” Joe said absentmindedly, his blue-veined hands stroking Butch. “She misses the ranch. It’s killing her not seeing the animals. It’s killing me not seeing her.”
“We have to help her come home,” Sully said.
Hope flickered in Joe’s eyes. “How?”
“We need to help her feel safe. By getting you healthy. Getting the ranch healthy. You need to start treating her better.”
“God knows you’re right.” Butch put his front paws up on the window. Joe followed his gaze then turned back to Sully. “I’ve been a tough old bastard all these years. Pushed us all too damn hard. I gave your mom a run for her money. Thirty years’ worth. Then one day she looks at me and says, ‘I’m done.’ Just like that. ‘I’m done.’ It was a shotgun blast to my chest. She packed up and left me. I couldn’t stop her.” He swallowed hard. “Look at me now. Hell, I’m paying the price.”
Sully waited patiently for more of the story but like Ronnie, Joe didn’t reveal the cause of their separation. They sat in the cab watching the wipers clear snow off the window. Sully finally said, “We all make mistakes, Dad.”
“I’ve made mistakes all right. Lying on my back for six months, I had nothing to do but think about mistakes, and how I’d do things different if I ever got the chance. I’m done with smoking and drinking. I promised that to your mom.” He reached over and put his hand on Sully’s shoulder. “I didn’t know if I was gonna live long enough to see you or your mom again. I’m proud as hell that you’re a Marine.”
Sully felt a lump in his throat and looked straight ahead out the window, feeling ill-equipped to deal with this new version of his father. He wondered if Joe’s meds had affected his mind, or if the stroke had caused some brain damage. Something had worn down Joe’s thick, thorny hide, and his feelings were leaking out.
The car behind them hit the horn.
“We’re up,” Joe said.
Sully pulled up to the cashier and paid for three bags of food and the aroma of fried chicken filled the cab. He pulled out onto the icy street. Butch sniffed the bags, nose vibrating. Joe held him tight. They both were somber and silent as the Ford weaved through the side s
treets to Ronnie’s rental. He parked in her driveway, helped Joe out of the truck, and wheeled him over the snowy sidewalk with the bags of food bouncing on top of the suitcase. Butch ran ahead, his fuzzy stump of a tail wagging furiously. Sully saw that his mother had been busy in his absence. Stacks of boxes, three rows deep, now lined the porch. Must be from the guest room. She opened the door before he knocked and stepped aside to let them enter. “Joe,” she cried.
“Baby!” Joe shoved the suitcase and bags of food at Sully, stood on shaky legs, and pulled Ronnie into his arms. To Sully’s amazement, the hug turned into a kiss, and the kiss just kept on going. Feeling like a third wheel, he retreated to the kitchen and set the bags of food on the table, now cleared of his mother’s papers. When he sauntered back into the living room, coughing loudly, they were still locked in a body grip. Ronnie pulled away first, her face flushed with color. Joe sank into the wheelchair, his hand clinging to hers. He looked five years younger.
“Honey,” she said to Sully, breathless. “Would you move the boxes on the porch into the garage?”
“Sure thing.” Grateful for something to do, Sully took his sweet time organizing the garage. Clearly, after a six-month separation, his parents needed some time alone. When he reentered the house, he found them sitting in the kitchen, Joe drinking a cold Budweiser and Ronnie pulling food containers from the bags. “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor spilled from the stereo speakers. Sully grabbed a Bud from the fridge and joined them.
“This is enough fat to land you right back in the hospital, Joe,” Ronnie chided, examining the contents of the containers. “If you survive this meal, you’re only eating my cooking from now on.”
“I dreamt about your cooking every dang day.” Joe set his bottle on the table, eyes sparkling with pleasure. “Bring it on.”
They opened the cartons and filled their plates, and for a few moments the only noise in the room was the crunching of chicken and Joe’s blissful moans. Ronnie looked radiant. Her adoring gaze moved from Sully to Joe, and back to Sully. He saw that she had styled her hair, put on makeup, and was wearing the opal pendant on a gold chain he brought her from Kandahar. It sparkled when it caught the light just right. Inevitably, the conversation turned to ranching and he felt his shoulders bunch up with tension.
