The Honk and Holler Opening Soon

by Billie Letts

  Reverend Thomas, Brother Junior and Sister Grace’s husband, Jennings Washington, had brought parts pirated from their wrecked Sunday bus, while the others—Bilbo, Soldier and Hooks, contributed some tools, a couple of good tires and a steering wheel Quinton had found at the junkyard north of town.

  But they all brought their enthusiasm for helping Bui repair the bus, a project they’d learned about while they waited together at the hospital on Monday night.

  No one, however, was more zealous than Galilee who was in the kitchen preparing chicken and dumplings, purple-hull peas and cornbread.

  She had insisted on helping out with the cooking since Caney was spending nights at the hospital and Vena stayed through the days. MollyO was happy for the help and the company, though most of their conversations took place in whispers for fear of waking Caney who hadn’t returned from the hospital until almost eight that morning.

  They needn’t have worried, though. Caney had gone to sleep as soon as he crawled into bed, a sleep so deep he hadn’t even heard Vena when she was sick in the bathroom just minutes after he closed his eyes.

  When Vena stepped into the cubicle in ICU, she made sure to have a smile on her face, just in case. But nothing had changed. Bui was still in a coma.

  The surgeon had repaired the damaged spleen, put in a stint for the contused kidney and treated the busted clavicle. But with the concussion, all they could do was wait. And they’d been waiting for three days.

  Vena pulled a chair up beside the bed to do what the nurses had told her to do. Talk, they’d said. Pretend he can hear you. Just talk.

  “So, how’re you doing today, huh? Yeah, I can tell. You look a lot better.”

  She reached through the rails of Bui’s bed and curled her fingers around his.

  “Me? I’m fine. Great. I’ve got this one little problem, though. Looks like I’m pregnant. You’re the first to know.

  “Happy about it? No, I wouldn’t say that. Well, I’ll try, but I don’t know if I can make you understand.

  “See, Bui, I just don’t have the right stuff to be a mother. There’s something missing in me, I think. I mean, I don’t feel anything for what’s growing inside me. And that’s pretty sad, isn’t it?

  “Other women, they get pregnant, they think it’s the most wonderful thing ever happened to them. That’s all they can talk about. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? They start thinking up names and making quilts. They buy baby beds and teddy bears, start taking vitamins, stop smoking.

  “Well, yeah, I have, but that’s because they make me so sick. And not just cigarettes, either. Coffee, onions, eggs. Let’s not talk about it or I’ll be sick again.

  “But what I’m trying to say is, I don’t see myself holding a baby in my arms and singing lullabies. God, I don’t even know a lullaby.

  “Now my sister Helen, she would’ve been a great mother. She loved kids. Talked about having babies when she was just a little girl. Made me play house—she’d be the mother and I’d have to be the baby. Sure, I went along with it. Had to. She was my big sister.

  “But me? What I wanted was to go somewhere. Get on a horse and ride as far as I could. Climb into the back of my dad’s pickup, no matter where he was going. I just wanted to move.

  “I’ve always been like that. Get on the road, see where it would take me. I figured there was always something new, something waiting for me just down the highway or in the next town or across the next mountain.

  “So, that’s the story. Probably hard for you to understand, you being so happy about your baby, but—”

  A nurse stopped at the door, peered in at Bui, smiled at Vena, then disappeared.

  “I guess my time’s about up, Bui…. I know, but we just get ten minutes with you, and they’ll only let us come back here every two hours.

  “No, Caney doesn’t know, has no idea. He’s got enough problems of his own. I mean, what would he do with a baby? And what about when she’s older? What if she turned out like Brenda? Hell, what if she turned out like me? Can’t stay in one place, can’t really call any place home. And you know why? Because home doesn’t last. That’s for the movies.

  “Look what happened to me and Helen. Look at yourself, Bui. You live in a church. Caney lives in a cafe. You ask me, no one has a home anymore.

  “So I’m going to get rid of the baby. But it’s not the first time for me. No, it doesn’t hurt. Not the physical part, anyway.

  “The other part? I was only seventeen, so it’s hard for me to remember exactly what I felt.

  “Oh, sometimes I’d see a baby and I’d think about mine. But one funny thing… see, if I’d gone ahead and had that baby, it would’ve been born in April. So I picked a date. April eighteenth. Now, every April, on the eighteenth, I sort of go through the birthday thing in my mind. And I think, Today she would’ve been five. This week, she would be eleven. Next Tuesday, she’d be fifteen. That’s crazy, isn’t it? But…”

  Vena pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder as she stood.

  “You know what, Bui? I’ve never told anyone this stuff. And I don’t know for sure why I’m telling you except I’m leaving and I figure you’ll keep it to yourself after I’m gone.

  “I can’t wait much longer, but I’d like to stick around until you’re back on your feet again. Caney never really needed me there, but he needs you. You and MollyO.

  “No, I won’t be coming back. See, Bui, Caney’s a good man. A fine man. He deserves a hell of a lot better than me.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” The nurse was the same one who had stopped by earlier. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Sure. I’m going.”

  Then Vena leaned over and brushed her fingers across Bui’s cheek. “You rest now. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. And we’ll talk again.”

  Vena didn’t usually get back from the hospital until well after dark, when Caney took over. So when she walked in at four-thirty, he knew something had changed.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, steeling himself for bad news.

  “He woke up, Caney! He woke up an hour ago!”

  MollyO whooped as she ran from the kitchen and grabbed Vena in her arms. Caney, a smile spreading across his face, let out a breath he felt he’d been holding for a long time.

  “Did you talk to him?” MollyO asked. “Does he seem… well, did he make sense?”

  “He didn’t talk much, didn’t act like he remembered what happened, but he asked if he’d had a letter from his wife and he told me to be sure the gelding gets his carrots.”

  “Oh, thank you, Jesus,” MollyO whispered.

  “His damned carrots.” Caney laughed then, his first in many days.

  “The doctor came in just before I left. Said they’ve got the infection under control, and he thinks the urologist might take the stint out tomorrow, see how his kidney’s going to work. But he told me everything looks good.”

  “I’m going to call Life.” MollyO reached for the phone.

  “I was reading to him, Caney,” Vena said as she slid onto a stool. “Some fishing magazine I found in the waiting room. And when I finished, I looked up and he was looking at me. He said, ‘Miss Vena, you go to fishing today?’ ”

  Vena let the tears come then as Caney reached across the counter and took her face in his hands.

  “He’s going to make it, Vena.”

  “Yeah. He is.”

  MollyO hung up the phone and said, “Life’s coming right over. He thinks we should have a glass of champagne, but he doesn’t like it, so he’s bringing a jug of cider.”

  “I’ll settle for a glass of tea.”

  “You look so tired, Vena. Let me get you something to eat. How about some of Galilee’s chicken and dumplings?”

  “That sounds good.”

  MollyO scooted off to the kitchen as the phone rang. “I’ll get it back here,” she said. “I’ll bet a dollar it’s Wanda Sue trying to get a scoop on the news.”

  “She’s right,” Caney said. “You look worn o
ut.”

  “How about you? You don’t look much more rested than I feel.”

  “I slept till almost noon.”

  “How’d things go here today?”

  “Fine. Looks like it’ll be a while before they have the bus running, but MollyO and Galilee kept things going out here.”

  “Has she left?”

  “Yeah, not long ago. Doc Corley was by again.”

  “And?”

  “He says the gelding’s not any better. Thinks an infection is setting in. He’s changing the medication, but…”

  “But what?”

  “He still thinks we should put the gelding down.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said we’d give it a few more days.”

  Caney had fallen asleep around eleven, while Vena, feigning restlessness, sat in the dining room with a book. She waited until nearly midnight when she heard him snoring softly before she slipped into the kitchen, grabbed a long sharp knife, then stepped outside, closing the door soundlessly behind her.

  She had prepared what she would need earlier that evening when she went to the barn to check on the gelding—dead branches and dry twigs for the fire and the bundle she’d hidden nearby.

  “Sorry to make you walk on that leg,” she said as she haltered the gelding. “But you’ve suffered enough.”

  After she led the horse from the barn, she tethered him to a sycamore not far from the kindling she’d stacked. Once she had the fire going, she retrieved the secreted bundle and laid out what was inside. Then she picked up the knife and went back to the gelding.

  “This won’t take long, boy.”

  The animal turned his head toward her, his eyes reflecting light from the fire as she cut switches of his mane and tail, whispering words to calm him as she worked.

  When she finished, she squatted beside the fire to pour water from a plastic bottle into the dirt, then used her hands to work it into loose, thin mud.

  With the fire blazing, she picked up a large strip of clean cotton cloth and waved it back and forth through the smoke coming from the flames, and as she did, she started to chant, words and sounds passed from her greatgrandfather to her grandfather to her, from a memory as old as her tribe.

  Still chanting, she stripped sage from the stems she’d gathered, making a small pile of the weed in front of her. Then she took a handful of sage and one of horsehair and rolled them together between the palms of her hands.

  Finally, she spread mud on the cloth, then worked the sage-and-horsehair mixture into it.

  Finished, she went to the gelding, knelt and pressed the poultice to his leg, while the moon cast them in lacy patterns through the branches of the sycamore tree.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  MOLLYO AND GALILEE sparred for five days over where Bui would stay when he left the hospital, but Galilee finally won out, her strongest argument being that she’d midwifed fifty-three babies. Caney couldn’t quite see the connection, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

  Fresh from her victory, Galilee spent the next twenty-four hours working to make her house patient ready. She aired pillows, bleached sheets, boiled dishes and sanitized the bathroom, growing faint once with the fumes of ammonia.

  She hung a small silver bell on the poster of her spare bed, lowered the shades to soften the light and prepared a tray with bandages, alcohol, liniments and salves.

  Then she turned down the ringer on her telephone, lettered a “Do Not Disturb” sign for the door, warned the neighborhood children about noise and threatened two barking dogs.

  Long acquainted with the cleansing powers of wild greens, she made pot liquor from poke, dock and lamb’s-quarters gathered from a nearby field, then squeezed a pitcherful of orange juice to cool in the fridge.

  Late that afternoon, with Brother Junior driving her, she went to town. She bought Bui a pair of house shoes at the Mercantile, stopped by Sister Nadine’s to borrow a cane and went to the library where she checked out The Practical Book of Health, then stayed up half the night to read it.

  The next morning she dug new potatoes from her garden and made a pan of potato soup, cut roses from her trellis and arranged them in a tall yellow vase, then swept off the welcome mat in front of her door.

  Finally, she said a prayer asking God for guidance, put on a fresh white apron, then sat on her front porch swing to wait for Vena to deliver her patient.

  When he came, she bundled him off to bed, and for the next week, she medicated, fed, washed and bandaged, worrying over every grimace and groan.

  She applied cold compresses to drive down his fevers, held his head when twice he threw up, massaged sore muscles and aching joints to ease his pain, read to him when he was restless and hurried to his bedside to calm him when he cried out in his sleep.

  Eight days later, when he finally emerged, he was fattened, shaved, bathed, free of infection—and regular.

  But when Vena arrived to drive him back to the Honk, Galilee went into a fit of anxiety, checking and rechecking his splint and warning against drafts, spicy food, missteps and exertion.

  She was still cataloging dangers as she helped settle him in the car. Just before she shut his door, she reminded Vena once again that he was to be returned to her in two hours, hinting that if he wasn’t, she might give the sheriff a call.

  Then she stood in the street, waving until the car was out of sight.

  On Bui’s first visit to the Honk, MollyO brought him a pillow to put at his back, Caney made him a special lunch of beef tips and noodles and Vena played “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma,” his favorite song, on the jukebox.

  The regulars, alerted to his return, dropped by with gifts and cards, handshakes and hugs.

  Life brought him a used book wrapped in brown paper, Sex: The Facts, The Acts, & Your Feelings, but cautioned him not to open it until he was alone. Hooks gave him three pounds of filleted crappie, Wilma Driver presented him with a Century 21 key chain, and Soldier brought a jar of his wife’s strawberry jam. Quinton made him a present of a chess set he’d carved from pear wood, and Bilbo and Peg gave him a gift certificate for an oil change at the Grease-and-Go.

  They stayed to kid him about the pretty nurses at the hospital and tell old jokes about nearsighted proctologists and bumbling gynecologists.

  They laughed at Soldier’s story about eating a Vicks sandwich when he was eight, a futile attempt to cure strep throat in time to go to summer camp, and they roared at Bilbo’s account of a punishing bus trip to California only three days after he was circumcised at the age of fifty-three.

  They brought Bui up-to-date on Big Fib’s latest encounter with aliens, told him about the fire in the kitchen of the Dairy Queen and the newest graffiti scrawled on the city water tower: “A boy’s best friend is a chicken.”

  But they didn’t mention the shooting, not one word, and when Wanda Sue stopped by, Caney pulled her aside to tell her he would poison her coffee if she even thought about bringing it up.

  Bui managed to slip away from them once on the pretext of going to the bathroom, but Vena found him in the kitchen getting meat scraps for Spot and carrots for the gelding.

  When he walked out the back door, the dog yipped and ran to meet him at the fence, more excited by his attention than the food he offered. Then, as he made his way across the pasture, the gelding caught his scent and came trotting toward him, the only signs of his wound a slight limp and a pink scab on the shin of an otherwise sound and sturdy leg.

  When Galilee called, alarmed that Bui was five minutes late, the regulars, beginning to see signs of his tiring, said their good-byes and scattered, while Vena and MollyO gathered up his gifts and carried them out to the car.

  But Bui held back, waiting until he had Caney alone.

  “Mr. Chaney, I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why the man called Sam shoot to kill me with his gun?”

  Caney, thrown off-guard, reached for a cigarette and matches, bu
ying time before he answered.

  “Well, Bui. Sam was, uh…”

  “He shoot me because I Vietnamese?”

  The question hung in the air like the smoke from Caney’s cigarettes until finally he said, “Yes,” but when he did, he had to look away.

  “Man called Sam fight in Vietnam War?”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “Mr. Chaney, you fight in Vietnam War, I think so.”

  “I was there.”

  “Then why you don’t shoot me?”

  Caney was quiet for several moments, then he said, “I never could come up with a good reason.”

  The two men locked eyes then as something unspoken passed between them… something that had started in another place, in another time… something that had forever linked them.

  Bui stayed a little longer at the Honk each day until, by the end of the week, he was around for most of the afternoon. But with his strength returning, he began to feel bored and useless just sitting, so he started finding small jobs to do despite MollyO’s protests.

  About the most he could manage with one good arm was to set up tables with silverware, refill tea and coffee and bus some tables, a few dishes at a time.

  The dining room was usually full by noon because the fire at the Dairy Queen had shut it down temporarily; most of that business was coming to the Honk. And with school out, Vena had so much business outside, she was kept running from midmorning until closing time.

  She was keeping up, but just barely. Occasional bouts of nausea were dragging her down, so that by early evening she had little energy left.

  Caney was unaware that she sometimes disappeared for several minutes at a time, but he’d noticed that she looked tired and was often withdrawn and quiet.

  She covered up by saying she might be a bit anemic, a problem she’d had from time to time. And when he saw her sipping a dark-colored liquid from a fruit jar she kept in the cooler, she explained that she’d gathered rattle-bush for tea, good for the blood, that would put her right in no time, though, in truth, the tea was to help her control morning sickness.

  Even so, Caney decided she needed some help outside, especially with the hottest part of summer coming on, and though she said she could manage, he hired Quinton’s sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Kim, who was saving money to go to college to study art.