by Tim Sandlin
“My God, what are you talking about?” Lydia asked.
“Oly. I know what you have in mind, and it won’t pick cotton.”
“Oly is ninety-nine years old.”
The man in question had returned his attention to the Yahtzee dice, oblivious to anything that didn’t fall into his immediate focus. The woman wearing clothes looked Lydia over with eyes recently released from cataracts.
She said, “You’re no spring chicken, honey.”
Lydia fled.
***
Monday was check-in-with-your-parole-officer day.
“Oly’s waiting with his oral history,” Brandy said. “You have to go back.”
“Over your dead body.”
“Murder is a revocable offense.”
Lydia faced Brandy Epstein across a government-surplus laminated desk surrounded by government-surplus file cabinets. Brandy was wearing a forest green career-woman suit. Lydia wore cutoffs, a T-shirt, and clogs. The Isadora Duncan look had been temporarily abandoned.
Brandy rustled a form. “This is your needs-and-risks assessment. We use it to determine the level of control exercised upon a parolee. That’s you.”
“I’m not a child.”
“Then don’t act like one.”
There was a tense moment of extended eye contact. Imagine two female praying mantises poised over the dying husk of a mutual lover.
Brandy said, “You can be placed in any of four categories, ranging from high, where we meet twice a week, and I observe while you urinate in a cup, to minimum, where you and I are virtual strangers.”
“What hoops do I jump through to get minimum?”
“No hoops. You only have to cooperate on your community service assignment.”
“But Oly is senile. He doesn’t know what century he’s in.”
Brandy gave Lydia the parole officer’s give-me-a-break look, which is much like Lydia’s own give-me-a-break look, only more world-weary.
“I spoke to Oly Saturday. He’s as alert as you are.”
Lydia knew she’d been insulted, but for a change, she didn’t trash-talk back. She’d met women like Brandy Epstein in the pen. They considered themselves tough broads and were basically unaffected by anything short of a chair up against the head.
“I don’t like old people,” Lydia said. “I wish old people would go away.” She studied her fingernails in a moment of quiet self-examination. “It would be gratifying to load all these geezers onto a spaceship and blast them into orbit around some other planet.”
“You know, you’re getting fairly close to the senior demographic yourself,” Brandy said.
“If one more person tells me that, I’m going to break a window.”
Brandy put on her half-glasses with the cord connecting the earpieces. She picked up a three-ring binder and flipped pages. “Wee Ones Day Care needs a volunteer in diaper changing.”
“I’d rather die.”
Brandy turned to another page. “You know anything about pouring concrete?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you must go back to Oly.”
***
There was a mop bucket in the hall, and Ellis Gill raised his hand to touch Lydia’s arm, to guide her around it. But he couldn’t do it, and she knew he couldn’t do it. She knew he had tried to touch her arm and failed, and that brought Lydia pleasure.
“Will you be staying for snack?” Ellis asked. “I’m sure some of the folks would like to meet you. It’s not every day we’re visited by a famous feminist.”
“I won’t be staying for snack.”
Ellis’s head bobbed up and down in acknowledgment. It’s a strange head, shaped more like a little boy’s, with rounded planes and no definition. Like a junior high yearbook photo with an old face.
“I hope you don’t mind if Mrs. Dukakis is present during the interview. She insisted, and I just couldn’t say no.”
“I can.”
“Mrs. Dukakis is Oly’s special friend. We like to encourage our residents to have special friends. It gives them a feeling of youthful exuberance.”
Lydia raised an eyebrow. “You mean she’s his girlfriend?”
“That’s what we would call it if they were younger. It’s comparable to children pretending to go steady. We encourage it.”
Lydia stopped and turned on Ellis. “What are you running here?”
His neck turned a purplish shade. “I beg your pardon?”
“You think because half of them wear diapers, you can treat them like toddlers.”
“Why, no. Of course not.”
Lydia stared a moment, then whirled and entered the solarium.
***
The solarium had originally been a sunroom full of plants, but they had some problems with allergies and one elderly woman who ate ferns, so the real plants had been replaced by fake ones. Because three walls were glass, the solarium stayed about ninety degrees, which was fine by the old-timers who’d lived through eighty Jackson Hole winters.
Oly sat rigid in a pink dining-room chair—that unnatural pink they paint the fingernails of department-store mannequins. He was wearing a long-sleeved white cowboy shirt buttoned all the way to his goiter, gray slacks, and sandals with black socks. A woman was pinching back buds on a fake wandering Jew. Lydia recognized her as the tiny crone with the New Orleans accent from the Yahtzee game. She was dressed for church—rayon dress, white gloves.
Ellis said, “Lydia, this is Irene Dukakis. I don’t think you two were properly introduced the other day.”
Irene said, “I’m watching you, missy.”
Lydia ignored Irene. Instead she went about setting up the Radio Shack voice-activated tape recorder with the accessory microphone on a stand. Oly didn’t blink or move his head in any way. There was some question of rigor mortis.
Ellis fussed over Irene. “No need to cut back the plants, Mrs. Dukakis. They’re plastic.”
“I know they’re plastic. I’m not stupid, dear.”
Lydia studied the mike setup and spoke without looking at Irene or Ellis. “Then why are you cutting them back?”
Irene lowered her white-gloved hands. “Because they’re gangly.”
“Does she have to be here?” Lydia asked, still without looking at anyone.
Irene walked over and sat next to Oly. “I’m his chaperone.”
“Chaperone?”
Irene straightened Oly’s silver and turquoise collar corners; it’s hard to say if he noticed. She said, “I’m here to make certain Oly isn’t abused. According to the Phil Donahue Show, there’s more abuse in retirement homes than day-care centers.”
Lydia stared at Oly, taking particular note of his goiter. “I wouldn’t touch this man with latex gloves.”
Oly’s mouth worked like he was chewing. Then he croaked, “I was born in Dover, Delaware, in 1893.”
“Hold on, hoss,” Lydia said. “The tape’s not rolling yet.”
Oly returned to his catatonia imitation. Irene brought a Kleenex out of her bra strap and dabbed at a tiny bit of saliva in the corner of Oly’s mouth.
She said, “Oly is the only eligible bachelor over eighty-five from here to the Montana border. All the women are after him.”
“That’s the saddest thing I ever heard,” Lydia said.
“Unless you count Lumley McConnell, which I don’t, because he hasn’t bathed since his wife passed over.”
Lydia leaned toward the microphone. “Testing, one, two, three, four, community service is a frigging bore.”
Irene looked down at her white gloves. She seemed suddenly overcome by depression. “You read in Redbook about girls who are sexually active in their eighties and nineties, but what I don’t understand is who they’re sexually active with.”
Lydia pressed a Rewind button, and the tape w
hirred, then she pushed Play. “Testing, one, two, three, four, community service is a frigging bore.”
Ellis Gill said, “My presence is needed in the crafts room. I’ll drop back by to check on you kids later.”
Lydia said, “Whatever.”
Oly did the chewing thing again and started over. “I was born in Dover, Delaware, in 1893.”
“We don’t need the filler material,” Lydia said. “You should skip growing up and start when you first came to Teton County.”
Oly’s head slowly rotated, and he glared at Lydia, giving the effect of an irritated tortoise.
“Oly has it all straight in his head,” Irene said. “He can’t skip around.”
“Jesus,” Lydia said. “No one’s interested in childhood memories.”
“I was born in Dover, Delaware, in 1893.”
“Jesus,” Lydia said again as she hit the Record button.
5
I was born in Dover, Delaware, in 1893, the only begotten son of Jan and Portia Pedersen. My father was of the second generation out of Uppsala, Sweden, and my mama was of so many generations out of Bath, England, the family had lost track or wouldn’t say. Suffice it that since well before the American Revolution, the Wiggins people had crouched flush up against the Atlantic Ocean, as far east as they could be and still not leave Delaware. They owned a company that made iron beds and tin chamber pots.
Granddad Wiggins viewed anyone who come to Delaware after his first ancestor as riffraff. And my father was the worst sort of riffraff, that is, the kind who marries Granddad Wiggins’ daughter. I don’t recall Mr. Wiggins except for his mutton-chop sideburns and irate eyebrows. Facial hair. I don’t recall the man. Dad called him the Slop Bucket King.
Dad was a barber by trade, and a good one. After Mom and Dad had already been married some years, enough that I had come along, Mr. Wiggins formed a plan of arrogance and malice. He took it to mind to drive my father out of barbering and into the family business, never dreaming for a minute that my father might choose to leave Dover, and my mother might choose to go with him. No Wiggins in history had left Delaware, except to graduate from Dartmouth, which was fine, so long as they scampered home afterward. What the family forgot to reckon with was Jan and Portia were in romance love.
Mr. Wiggins convinced all those of his social set to take their tonsorial business elsewhere. His buds at the bank cut off Dad’s credit, then called in his shop loan.
Therefore, on the century turning, Dad moved us to San Francisco. I do not know why he chose San Francisco. Maybe he read an article or maybe some ship’s captain came back from California and told him of a barber shortage. Mama cried because she had to leave her piano, but myself, I was tickled pink. Young ones in Delaware wore knickers then, and I’d seen enough picture books to know cowboy youth did not wear no knickers. The general belief at the time being that folks west of Chicago had to be either cowboy or heathen. It didn’t strike me to consider the Pacific Ocean had sailors, same as the Atlantic, and I knew nothing of miners or Chinamen.
We like to didn’t make it West on account of old Mr. Wiggins told the state police my father had stolen bonds from his desk and a pair of gold cuff links. The police yanked us off the train in York, Pennsylvania. They put Dad through a hard time until they come to realize the throwdown—it was only a Delaware millionaire trying to impose his will. That disgusted the Pennsylvania police to the point where they apologized to Mama and gave me a sack of horehound drops and put us and our belongings on the next train to San Francisco.
***
We lived in a yellow house south of the slot there. We had a parlor with a three-piece furniture set upholstered in green plush. I used to love pushing my face into the plush. Dad rented a corner of the Oddfellow Building, where he barbered, only the Oddfellows called for a dime apiece off their haircuts, which was normal thirty-five cents. Shaves was fifteen cents. Dad got the idea to shave Chinamen’s heads around the pigtail, which they referred to as a queue. He wanted to charge twenty-five cents, only the Oddfellows wouldn’t let him. Oddfellows didn’t like Chinese. When an Oddfellow rode his carriage down the street, if a Chinaman stepped in front, the Oddfellow would just as leave pretend not to see him and run him down. I saw it happen more than once. The Oddfellows didn’t see me too good neither.
I liked the Chinamen ’cause they wore shiny pajamas outdoors and their talk was like birds. One time, my dad took me to a Chinese funeral parade. The deceased had been a general or somebody important and dignified, and these white policemen tied his queue to a hitch post and hit him with sticks. The Chinaman was so ashamed that white people had done this thing to him he went home and gassed himself from the light fixture. You cannot gas yourself from a light fixture now, but you could then.
They had a parade with just about all the important Chinese in San Francisco in it. Dad and I watched from the third-floor balcony of a hotel on Clay Street. Or maybe Dupont, I forget. Dad put me on his shoulders so I could see the thousands of Chinese all wearing white and carrying banners and riding horses. Some rode in cars. It was a big event to them.
Dad told me Chinese wear white for mourning instead of black like us because China is on the opposite side of the Earth and everything is backwards there. Up is down, and if you could read the letters on the banners they’d be backways. He said in is out, and I said what’s that mean? He said if a Chinaman tells you he is going inside, it means he is going outside. And vice versa. I do not know where Mama was that day. I think she had a headache.
***
San Francisco was pert near paradise for a lad of ten to twelve. The streets were chaos, and I did enjoy my chaos. There were cable cars and horse cars and streetcars; automobiles started showing up in bunches, yet most folks still went by horse carriage, only they had no stop signs or stoplights or any of these modern rules the government imposes on road travel nowdays. Ever intersection was a test of wills. That’s why so many, especially Chinamen and Indians, got run over. I saw a fat man in a white suit drive his carriage right over the top of a Mission Indian over to Market Street. He stopped his carriage and looked back and said, “At least it weren’t nobody white.”
The Indian’s legs were broke, but he didn’t show no pain. I don’t what come of him.
Mama hated me running the streets, on account of the Chinese and Indians, but I never saw neither bunch hurt a soul. It was sailors you had to keep a lookout for. A bud of mine got shanghaied, hauled away and turned into a sailor against his desires. He was only eleven years old. It like to ruined his family.
I was supposed to be in school, but I didn’t put much stock in it. There was too much excitement outside to study Latin and cipher. I only went to school when it was cold. For one thing, the teachers weren’t hardly older than me, and half hadn’t gone past eighth grade their own selves. They mostly read us Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Kidnapped and drew pictures on the blackboard they copied from the science book. I liked the stories, but spelling and grammar are not my strong suits, and I didn’t pay attention to science at all, which I’m glad for now, because fifty years after I left school, ever’thing they tried to teach me was proven wrong. Ever’thing children have been taught about science since the beginning of time has later proved false. There’s no call to think today is different. We shouldn’t even teach science since it’s all gonna be wrong in fifty years.
***
After a bit, Dad told the Oddfellows to go to heck and moved his shop over to Kearny Street. I had a job sweeping the hair up each day at 5 p.m., but he didn’t pay me nothing. Just made me work free.
At first, Mama liked being someplace where you were not judged by your last name, but then after a year or so, she didn’t. It’s hard when you have been important to not be important. She said the California fog smelled bad. So she would relax, Dad bought her a twelve-dollar fiddle and bow, and she took lessons from a man with the biggest mustache I ever saw. He
would shout at Mama for playing the notes wrong. She wound up not relaxing after all.
April of ’06, our lives changed between breaths. One breath we were this way and thought we always would be, and the very next breath we were more different than we ever thought possible. Change has come on me often like that. Maybe that is the main lesson I have learned in the last hundred years—it can all go to hell in a single breath.
I’d just woke up and was laying in bed, wishing I didn’t have chores, when the earthquake struck. The house shook like a dog shaking a rag doll—side to side, up and down. This wasn’t no rolling wave like I’ve heard earthquakes described since. It was a thorough shake. I held the bed with both hands to keep from being flung out, and listened to the dishes and knickknacks break. Pictures jumped off the walls. Plaster fell from the ceiling, making it quite a problem to breathe.
As soon as it stopped, I ran into Dad and Mama’s room. Dad was somewhat composed, considering, but Mama was pale and could not catch her breath. I went to find her a cup of water, but all the cups was broke, so I filled a Ball jar and took it in. I didn’t tell her the cups was broke. When she got her breath she took to crying and could not stop.
There was enough gas left in the pipes to make a pot of coffee, which Dad and me drank from jars, then we went out to see the street. Our block wasn’t so bad except for windows and a chimney or two had fallen. But when we looked away downtown to see where City Hall was you could see right through it. The sun was bright red, red as fresh blood from all the dust and smoke in the air. A big fire was blazing downtown, and our neighbor said Alameda had fell into the ocean. I don’t know how he knew that, but it turned out not true.
The fire grew, even as we stood in the street watching. All those gas light fixtures in the hotels had broke loose in the earthquake and then blew up. People were coming in a steady stream, leaving the fire district with trunks and blankets and what food they could find, making for the hills. Even the smallest of children carried bundles.
Little quakes kept up as the morning passed, so no one wanted to stay indoors. Dad and me took Mama to a park and found some women she knew. We left her there wrapped in a blanket. Dad wanted to see to the barbershop, and I wanted to see the fire, though I didn’t say so out loud. The streetcars hadn’t run, and it took a long while to walk to the business district, on account of waves of people coming at us. A number of the flee-ers was carrying talking machines. Phonographs. That seemed the possession they chose to save first, except some women who had ironing boards and irons.
