“Good Morning, Mr. Sampson.”
“What?”
“I said good morning to you.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He rolled over on to his side in the hospital bed to gaze out of the window. It was gray. “Looks like a good mornin.” He rolled back over to face the doctor.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Best I could, I suppose.”
“Good, good. Mr. Sampson, I’d like to talk to you about a few things.”
“Well, go head.”
“We looked at the scans.”
“Just call me Earl.”
“Okay, Earl. Thank you. We looked at the scans. I’m afraid we’ve found a quite large mass in the area we call the retroperitoneum. It’s like the back of your abdomen. There’s a concern for cancer, but we just won’t be sure until we do a biopsy.”
Earl sat up slowly and propped his torso up on the pillows and stared out the window again. He looked back at the doctor.
“I know it. I’ve got it already.”
“You knew?”
“I could feel it workin its way inside me. The pains. They always deep inside me. Ain’t nothin I could do but bare it till it was too bad to bare.”
“I see.” The doctor looked down at his chart and back to the man. “It’s quite advanced, unfortunately. We’ll need to run some more tests before we decide on the next course of action.”
“Alright then, doc.”
“You’ll need to fast for the reminder of the day.”
“What now?”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to eat at all today.”
“Lord in heaven. I ain’t ate yesterday neither.”
“I know, I know.”
“I’m hungry, doc. I’m hungry down to my bones.”
“I’m sorry.” The young doctor rested his hands on the side of the bed and looked down at the older man. He smiled sadly. His hair was short and curled. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
The doctor walked out and left Earl alone. He breathed in and out and took his hand and applied pressure into his abdomen until he could feel the pain and tears welled in his eyes. He let go and stared up at the small television in the corner of the room, up against the ceiling. A man with spiked hair was eating enormous hamburgers, the cheeses and sauces oozing off the sides, covering his hands and the plate and the table. He looked away.
“Nurse,” he shouted. “Nurse.”
No one came and he huffed and averted his gaze.
“Got dammit.”
He looked around the bed and found the remote and pressed the button and waited. The steady beeps beside him kept him company until the nurse arrived.
“Howdy, Mr. Sampson.”
“Earl.”
“Hm?”
“Earl.”
“Ah, yes. Earl. That’s it. What can I do for you Mr. Earl?”
“I’m so hungry.”
She grabbed the chart beside him and read it over and then looked at the screen over by the counter.
“I see. I must’ve missed the NPO on the door. I’m sorry Mr. Earl, but you just can’t eat.”
“But I’m so fuckin hungry, miss. I’m so, so hungry.”
She bit her lip and looked down at the chart again. “I know. But I just can’t do that.”
He exhaled loudly and shook his head. She looked up at the television as beads of sweat formed on the man’s head in the screen. The remote was behind her on the utility cart and she grabbed it and turned the television off, setting it on his bed.
“Can you stay with me here awhile? Please, miss?”
She looked down at her watch.
“I’ll spend what I can.” She smiled at him and pulled up a chair and sat beside him, her hands folded together in her lap.
“Tell me bout you, miss. What’s your name?”
“I’m Anna.”
“Anna. Nurse Anna. That’s a good name.”
“Anna Hinson”
“I like it. You been workin at this here hospital a while now?”
“About ten years.”
“That’s a while.”
“Sure is. Feels like yesterday that I started here.”
“If one thing certain, it’s time flies.”
“It sure does, Mr. Earl.”
“Married?”
“Yes sir, and with two kids.”
“Beautiful. Wonderful.”
“What about you?”
“Ah, naw. Never got round to it. Too busy.”
“What do you do?”
“Handyman. Odd jobs. Only one in town that do it. They need me.”
“I see. A very noble cause.”
“From lil ol Eulaville. Out by the lake. Someone’s gotta do it.”
“You live alone?”
“I do, I do. On my lil homestead out there. No water, not lectricty, no nothin.”
“You’ve been living without running water or power?”
“All my life.”
“Wow. Any one else out there?”
“There’s a few of us. Makes life go nice n slow jus how we like it.”
“I take it you have a car, though.”
“How’s I gonna be a handyman with no car? I gotta get to my clientele somehow. I got an ol chevy. Back when they made em right.”
“What jobs do you normally do?”
“Oh, anything, anything. Anything that’ll come over my way. Runnin posts, runnin pipes, paintin, mendin.”
“You know plumbing but don’t have any of your own?”
“Ain’t never saw the point. Just seemed a waste to me.”
She nodded at him and they sat in silence together for a few minutes.
“Which jobs do you like to do the most?”
“My favorite? Ah, well, prolly the ones with critters.”
“Critters?”
“Oh, coons, rats, mice, squirrels, birds. They get caught up in folks houses sometimes. Ask me to coax em out.”
“How do you coax them out?”
“I talk to em.”
“You talk to them?”
“Yes ma’am, I ask them to come on out.”
“Do they?”
“Oh most always. I got some little cages in the bed o my truck. Put em up in there and bring em back to my trailer and set em free. Like the company round my house.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Always somethin to listen to and look at when you’re out on the porch, rockin, maybe sippin on a lil some’n. Watchin the day go by.”
“Sounds relaxing.”
“Nothin beats it. Nothin. Othern sittin out by the water watchin the sun go down.”
“Well we can certainly agree there.” She smiled at him and he returned it. His eyes were red and wet.
“How’d you get so far from home, Earl? The lake’s not too close to here.”
“They drove me here. The hospital folk. Didn’t want me drivin myself.”
“You went to the county hospital up there?”
“Yes’m I did. The pain was eatin me. Eatin me alive. Couldn’t get no sleep, couldn’t do no work. They kept me for a few days. Sayed it was above they pay grade. Needed me to see a specialist. So they done got up n carted me down here to yours.”
She reviewed the chart again.
“Yes, that does seem best.”
“When they drove me down here I was lookin out that van window the whole time. I ain’t neva been outta Brown county before. Well, once, one time, my mistake. When I was a youngin. My uncle Daryl done took me to the city for my birthday. We went to the aquarium down there at the harbor.”
“It’s really great. We love taking the kids there. When was that?”
“Shit.” He started to count on his fingers and looked up at the ceiling away from her. “That musta been nineteen-seventy four at the latest. At the very latest. We sat out there on the harbor and watched them dolphins go up and down and up and down outta the water and into the air, shootin sky high, tallern this here hospital.”
“No way.” She laughed with him.
“I swear it, I swear it, I do. Four stories high them dolphins leaped.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“We ate shramp and grits in the mornin at his friend’s place over by the tracks. They was puttin tracks all through black folk neighborhoods back then. Still do now I suppose. But that’s where the best eatin was. Man was that good. Woo boy. Ain’t nothin compared to that burgah dinner I ate on the way home, though. We stopped at that shack and ate untils we was splittin at the seams. My uncle Daryl said ‘Theys gon have to roll me home.’” Earl laughed to himself.
“He was a character, that Daryl, he was. But we ate like kings. Burgahs piled high with cheese and patties, the fattest maters you eva seen, onions sky high, and honey, lemme tell you, them fries were fried in the oil o God’s lamps, no doubt. Don’t get me started on them malts, neither. Cheerwine and vanilla, oh my God. Oh my God.” He whistled to himself and shook the hospital bed in his excitement.
“Stop, Earl, stop. I’ve just eaten breakfast. You can’t make me hungry again.”
“I’m so hungry, Miss Anna, I’m so hungry myself.”
“I know. We’ll get you through these tests today and then you can eat tomorrow.”
“I just can’t wait.”
“I know. Is your uncle still around?”
“Nah, shit no. Daryl been dead, uh, near thirty year now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago, long time ago now. Jus part o gettin old.”
She stood up from the chair to leave.
“I saw that same burgah shack.”
“Hm?”
“In the car ride over here. I saw that burgah shack. They still open. They still servin them burgahs. Out in Purcellville.”
“Maybe you can go back when you’re out of here.”
“Maybe, just maybe. Thank you Miss Anna. I know you busy. Go head and get on.” He winked at her and shooed her away with her hand.
“I’ll see you later on today, Earl.” She gave him a small wave and left the room. Earl found the remote and turned the television back on. He watched the man eat.
He lay there alone with his emptiness and drifted into sleep and was with his uncle again. They sat at the bay and watched the seagulls and felt the cool water on their toes dangling down off the cement promenade. The water lapped at their feet and splashed back off the cement down below them, spraying their faces with foam and salt. The electric tide poured life through them up from their soles and to the tops of their heads and Earl felt his body pump with young enthusiasm and naivety and he knew he was in that special place again, that warm feeling, that velvet tunnel he saw and felt in his dreams of late. Each dream a step closer, an inch deeper into the warm hidden comfort at the far end. He awoke and the beeps from his machine brought his heart back into time’s march forward.
Earl sat up in the bed and slowly brought his legs to the side. They dangled there and he pulled the rolling tower beside him, tubes flowing up out of his arms and to the bags that were hanging there. He stood up, steadying himself with the rolling rod, and raised himself to his full length. He was tall and thin, his angles showing through the hospital gown. He shuffled over to the window and parted the vertical blinds and looked out. The top of the parking garage was below him. Some trucks and cars were parked there and some seagulls took turns tearing trash, scattering the shreds of paper bag into the wind. Below the parking garage he could see a parking lot, and beyond that the highway. The hedges along the road were neat and clean. Their caretaker had done good work. He squinted and then he saw it set back behind the woods that flanked the road: the river rolling on up. In his mind’s eye he could see the dumping of the water out into the harbor, the commingling of the fresh and the salt. He breathed in and out deeply, searching for that salty scent, his damp moisture fogging the glass before his face. He closed his eyes now and walked up the river, up out of the marshlands and past his lake, flowing on up into the swamps and the sandhills and beyond that to the steep escarpment he had been told about but had never seen. He came back down and remembered the shack there, right there along the highway by the tackle shop, with the river close behind it. It was still there. He could reach out and touch it. The glass was cool on his weathered fingers. He turned and ambled toward the door, his scepter scooting alongside him.
He stuck his head out and looked both ways and then went back into the room. Beside his bed was the little bag he had brought to the county hospital and he looked inside it for his billfold. There was some money in there and he grabbed what he could and folded it up neatly and stuck it above his ear, cushioned between his curled hair and cartilage. He returned to the door and looked again, inching out a little more this time. Not a soul walked the florescent hallway. He began to walk. The tunnel was long and quiet, save the fresh beeps of each door he passed. His gown drug softly on the floor while the five, small wheels sputtered. The windows at the end of the hallway grew closer, calling him to step off and fly away. They filled his entire vision and he saw his breath on the glass again. The hedges were down below. He turned to the two elevator doors and pressed the bottom button between them. He waited.
Movement at the other end of the hallway. It was them. They were coming for the tests. They were almost to his door.
The bell dinged and the shiny metal doors split down the middle and he walked inside. The doors closed and he stood there for a moment before looking at the control panel and pressing the button for the ground floor. He jolted and his stomach lightly lifted for a time and then he felt the elevator stop. He walked into the lobby and the glass doors slid apart and light filled the room. He walked toward it.
The air was moist and warm and the morning clouds had burned off. A light breeze flapped his gown about his torso and he looked down at his arm. The tube ran up into one of the bags on the pole. He lifted the tape off and pulled out the needle slowly, groaning in relief and pain.
“Got damn.”
He held his finger there for a few minutes, glancing at the lobby behind him. The doors were still open and he moved off to the side of the entrance and they closed silently together. He rolled the pole off into the grass and pushed it up against the brick of the building. Freedom at last. The wind breathed up underneath him again and he turned around and walked into the parking lot in his bare feet. The asphalt was hot but it did not burn him. His feet had seen worse. If he could just get to the hedges.
He stared down at the black between his feet and kept walking, counting the white lines, until he saw the successive shadows fall upon him. They were high above, circling, coming ever closer. He quickened his pace and found the hedges and stood by them for a rest. They sat at a concrete intersection and he pressed the button on the big metal pole there. The sign across the street flashed in numbers counting downward, the orange hand ordering his halt. He turned his attention back to the hedges. They had small, chopped leaves, and he followed the straight edges with his eyes, feeling the plane of green with his open palm, extending it long past and to the edge of the hospital property. The ding of the cross walk interrupted his reverie and he turned around, the white dancing man calling him forward.
The people stared at him from their cars. They watched him cross and he kept his gaze toward the other side, moving forward, his feet sliding on the cool, white paint between the black. At the other side he turned back around once more and looked at the hospital before resuming his journey on the sidewalk. The cars drove away and the faces with them. He looked up at the green sign, big and blocky in front of him.
Purcellville 6
He shook his head and walked past the sign, feeling on his stomach.
He walked for a long time. The highway was not how he remembered. That was a long time ago now, with his uncle. He harrumphed at each neon building and grumbled at each busy side road. He cursed every car he saw. They were so shiny and so clean. They were so free.
Exhaustion was deep in his bones.
Burgers & More – Enid’s Just Ahead!
These here the best burgahs in the whole gotdamn state, Earl. Sit down with your uncle now. Sit down with me and eat.
Shakes, Malts, Floats, Oh My!
What? You don’t like milkshakes? What you mean you never had no milkshake before? What your momma doin out there? I’mma need to talk with her, yessir, now you go on head and get strawberry, uncle Daryl gon treat you right.
Hungry??? You’re Almost There!
How bout them dolphin, Earl? Never seen a thing like it, have you? I say, have you? Didn’t think so. You seen gators, yessir, I know that, I once seen a gator come up out the lake and eat a dog. Yessir, I ain’t lying. You should see yo face. You don’t believe a gotdamn thing I’m tellin you. Yo uncle’d never lie to you now, no, no, no. Someone told me them dolphins smart as you and I. You believe that? Swear I heard that. No tellin if it’s true but one thing you outgha know is that they ain’t fish, not in the slightest, they like you and me. Swimmin deep down in that water, comin on up in the rivers. Type o water don’t matter.
Can You Smell The Good Cookin’ Yet?
They breathe air. Swear it, swear it. They free, Earl, free as the birds in the sky but in the water. Up in the ocean, up in the bay, up in the river. Don’t matter. They go where they want and gorge on all the food they can find. Not a bad life, huh? Damn, boy, you sure can eat. You want another’n?
Purcellville
Unincorporated
Earl stopped his worn feet upon the cement. The trees to his right had a break between them, a dirt path leading from the highway. He felt it looming through the break and walked down the path and off the highway, his feet rejoicing on the cool, muddied earth. The trees enveloped him in their canopy and then he saw it and went straight to it, the water lapping at his toes. His legs buckled and sat on the ground, his legs held by his arms in a wide embrace. The water cleaned his feet.
The river was black and the water flowed in a deep reverie. It was slow and held hidden secrets. His mind reached out to touch them, finding only the dense forest flanking the shores. The boughs hung over the dark water and held it there in a strange magnetism. He inhaled and exhaled, feeling the flush of oxygen throughout his body, and leaned back on his elbows, watching the birds dart above and between the sides of the river. Straight across from him, on the other side, a rotting dock descended into the water from the bank. The estuarine jungle had swallowed the base and he could not see it, only the corrupt wood emerging from the trees and slanting straight into the water. It was old and held his gaze. He saw the posts holding up its weight and followed them down into the flowing water, imagining their length to descend down, deep down, ballasted upon the foundation of the earth. The origin of all things down there, moving around the posts, securing the integrity of the world.
The dock held him for a while before his growling innards ripped him away and he stood up, wiping the pluff mud from his gown and washing his hands in the water. He turned away from the river and walked back up the dirt landing to the highway and continued his march. The suburbs were behind him now and he breathed in the country air. The cars looked better, rust on them and older folk driving, country folk. He felt more at home and his memory came back to him and he knew he was almost there. He could see it just ahead:
Enid’s Store & Kitchen
He walked up to the burger stand and looked it over, the name written in big, black block letters, the coca-cola sign white and red and flowing beside it. He was alone, standing between the little tables with their red umbrellas shielding the late morning sun. The window slid open and he approached. The woman inside looked through the opening at him, down at his bare feet and white gown and up to the money stashed above his ear. Inside, the blue smoke of grease lingered in the air. Earl’s body loosened and he felt the saliva pool in his dry mouth.
“Can I help you?”
“I been here before.”
“Welcome back.”
“Long time ago now.”
“We’ve been here a long time, Purcellville’s finest, don’t you know it.”
“Jus what I was tellin the kind folks at the hospital.”
“They didn’t give you your clothes back?”
“No ma’am, sent me right on my way, clean bill o health. Clean as a whistle.”
“Happy to hear it.” She smiled at him.
“I am too, I am too. I been thinkin bout your burgahs for weeks.”
“What can I get you, hon?”
He stepped back and looked at the menu above the window, the cartoon pictures staring down at him.
“Uh, double bacon cheeseburgah ma’am, please, large fry. You got them strawberry shakes still?”
“It’d be a shame if we didn’t. Lemme get that started for you.”
“This enough?” He took the cash from his ear and unfolded it neatly on the metal counter in front of him, handing it to her.
She counted it. “More’n enough, sugar.” She handed the change back to him and he placed it in the tip jar next to the window, winking at her.
“I just cannot wait, I just cannot,” he said, his two hands grasped together as he walked backwards to a table.
“I’ll bring it out to you.”
“Thank ya.” He bowed lightly with his hands still grasped and sat down at the picnic table.
He watched the cars go by, zooming on the highway, bound for the city. The sun was hot now, the day moving forward, and he felt good sitting there, feeling the sweat begin to drip down from his temples. He twiddled his thumbs back and forth and inspected his gnarled forearms for blemishes. There were many and it preoccupied him until the woman walked out with the cherry red plastic basket, the greasy and steaming meal piled on top of checkered parchment paper. He began to cry.
“You okay, hon?”
He nodded and she sat the basket with some napkins next to it right in front of him.
“I ain’t never been better, I’ll tell you that. Never.”
She laughed loudly. “I heard that, I heard that. You enjoy now.”
He nodded again, this time with his whole body, as she walked away and back into the kitchen. He began to eat.
The burger was gone in a matter of a few minutes and he only ate a few french fries between bites. He turned his attention fully to them now after the burger had disappeared and then began to nurse the milkshake, removing its lid and dipping the french fries deep within it, one at at time. He hummed and whistled while he ate, his feet tapping in a percussive dirge.
The meal was gone and he stood up satisfied, loudly licking his fingers and moaning to himself. He walked over the trash can and slid the greased parchment paper into it, placing the red basket on top with the others. The bright sun was directly above him now and he shielded his eyes with his hands looking up toward it before stretching, elongating his stomach spreading his arms out wide.
He approached the window and thanked the woman in it and then began to walk back down the highway. With his energy back he reached the landing quickly and went back into the tunnel. The dark trees welcomed him again and he followed them down through the darkness, each step on the cool earth soothing his soul as he came closer to the light at the bank. The river still moved soundlessly and he stopped with his ankles submerged.
The dock was right across from him. It went down and down and down into the depths. He could feel its pull. The black water gently flowed around its posts and washed upon the top where it went underneath. He stepped further into the water, his toes sinking into the submerged mud. It was up above his knees and his wet gown clung to his thighs. The water came above his waist and he relaxed and the current took him, his body floating limp to join the pillars of the earth.