Kinfolk, page 4
Graham spoke. “Okay, listen up, Shug. The man who will be sitting on your right is your ally. Name’s Kahn. From Huntley. He’s sympathetic to you. I talked to him a little about you. He knows your case.”
Shug nodded.
“The chairman’s a different story. He’s got a broomstick shoved up his you-know-what. He’s the one with thick glasses. He knows you were involved in organized crime. He knows big things went down. He knows what happened.”
Shug nodded again.
“Don’t even think about using the word self-defense or you’re screwed. You’re rehabilitated, remember? Full admittance of all crimes. Full responsibility. The whole deal. Show some remorse. Cry if need be.”
It had been fifteen years since Shug had stolen a lot of money from some very dangerous men. At the time, he had just gotten out of the military, just arrived home from being stationed in Korea. He was screwed up from what he’d seen. He got a job at a steel plant in Jefferson County. He drove fifty-three miles to work each morning in a piece-of-crap Ford that was barely holding together. It was weird, suddenly being an ordinary civilian after all he had seen and been through. You didn’t just go to Korea and then come home and cut the grass. To earn extra money, he started working as muscle for a very private organization. An organization that did not, technically, exist. An organization that channeled its liquid assets through a rainbow of businesses to hide the income’s less than legal origins. An organization with money.
One night things went terribly wrong. Shug’s weapon went off. A man died. It was an accident, but Shug had been the one holding the gun. Shug and Willie got away, but only briefly. One Saturday afternoon two state troopers had shown up at Shug’s door and offered him an all-expenses-paid vacation with meals included. He was convicted of manslaughter.
The fact that he’d been granted a hearing had been somewhat of a surprise. Class A felonies usually required twenty years served before a parole hearing, but somehow his lawyer had convinced a judge to grant one at fifteen. Maybe luck was on his side.
They arrived at a door. The guard stood to the side. His friend straightened Sugar’s collar one more time. “You hear about that blizzard?” asked his friend.
“Blizzard?”
“Bad blizzard in Ash County.”
“I don’t hear about anything in here.”
“Park got hammered. Some places got eight feet. They still don’t have power.”
“A blizzard in Park?”
“I’m sorry I brought it up. You need to focus right now.” His friend slapped his shoulders and looked Sugar in the eyes. “Talk about finding salvation, getting saved, forgiveness, repentance. Quote Scripture and all that crap. Talk about your service in Korea.”
“Okay.”
“Whatever you do, be careful. Guys have gotten denied for stupid stuff. Lighting a cigarette at the wrong time. A cocky look. Trying to be funny. Just act like a whipped puppy.”
Sugar smiled weakly.
In many ways, he was afraid to get out of prison. He knew they’d be waiting for him. He knew they’d pursue him. The Organization was all about getting even. They were all about honor among themselves. They would be ready to make his life a living purgatory. They would be ready to kill everything he held dear and make him watch. Even so, he was homesick. He missed the outside world. He missed the woods. He missed the holiday ham his mother used to cook each Christmas, which was a far cry from the meatloaf the prison served on Christmas Day. It was like the kitchen went out of their way to make it taste like wet socks.
“I have faith in you, Shug,” said the guard. “I’ve pulled all the strings I can, called in every favor, kissed every tail. Try to relax. Be yourself. Guy like you, you can get out on good behavior. We’ll be hunting turkey soon.”
Sugar nodded.
The door to the room opened, and Sugar shuffled into the room for his parole hearing.
By four o’clock that afternoon, Sugar Bass was a free man.
Chapter 6
When Minnie was a little girl, her mother used to sing a song before she tucked her daughter into bed each night. Every night, without fail. It was one of the first songs Minnie ever learned. It was a corny tune, but kids don’t know the difference.
Love before her,
Love behind her,
Love above her,
Love beneath her.
Love on the crown of her head,
Love on the soles of her feet,
Love way down in her heart.
There were hand motions to go with the lyrics. Minnie would touch a different part of her own little body for each part of the song. “Love before her,” she would touch her tummy. “Love behind her,” she would touch her little bottom. “Love above her,” Minnie would reach her hands way above her head. “Love beneath her,” she touched her toes—or at the very least her knees. “Love on the crown of her head,” Minnie would place both hands on her head. “Love on the soles of her feet,” Minnie would grab her tiny foot. “Love way down in her heart,” at which point Minnie’s mother would kiss her and tickle her.
Minnie thought about this as she lay in her hospital bed. She had been in this hospital for three days after passing out and hitting her head on the Waffle House floor after the deputies told her about her mama. When they couldn’t get Minnie to wake up, Ash County medics brought her to Baptist Memorial. The hospital room was a double. An old man lay in the bed next to hers. He was snoring loudly. And Minnie was thinking about that song her mother used to sing.
Love before her. Love behind her.
It was late. A matronly nurse sat beside her bed, absently reading Better Homes & Gardens by lamplight. The lady’s beehive hairdo was topped with a white paper hat. Why did nurses wear paper hats? Come to think of it, why did Waffle House cooks wear them? Minnie looked at the hospital bed where the old man was sleeping. He was making so much noise she could feel her teeth vibrate.
The nurse lowered her magazine. “Oh good, you’re awake. Would you like something to eat?”
Minnie felt her stomach churn at the mention of food. She was famished. The doctor said she’d passed out because of low blood sugar, but he had yet to explain what this meant. Neither had he explained what a “subdural hematoma” was, which she also had.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Minnie. “I’m pretty hungry.”
The nurse gave a warm smile. “I’ll be right back.”
The nurse left the room.
Minnie thought about when her mother last sang this song to her. She would have been maybe ten or eleven.
The police said they found her mother’s body in the closet and that they had to use her dental records to identify her remains. When Minnie asked when she could return home, the deputies told her she couldn’t. Minnie’s mother had been eight months behind on rent, and the landlord was booting her out. And so it was, within minutes of waking up at the hospital, Minnie had been approached by a social worker who informed her that she was now homeless. She would be entering foster care. Things just got better and better.
Minnie sang softly to herself. And she began to weep. The sound came through her chest. It made her head thrum and dulled the pain a little. Her mother was gone. Her father was dead. She had no family. No people. She was officially alone in this large world.
The man in the bed beside her stirred. He spoke to her in a gruff voice. “Excuse me. Do you mind?”
Minnie just looked at him.
“What?” she said.
The old man’s face was bruised and purple. His head was wrapped in bandages. He looked bad. Very bad. “I can hear you. Some of us are trying to sleep here.”
“Sorry.”
He rolled back over onto his side in a huff. She went silent for a few minutes and her mind began to drift, her head against the pillow, eyes pouring tears. The county was going to pay for the burial because the Bass family was broke. She started humming again.
The old man jerked himself bolt upright. He got a good look at her, and this time she could see in his fiery face that he was supremely ticked off.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I keep forgetting.”
The man locked eyes on her. “Well, here’s a wild idea for you: don’t.”
Then he rolled back over. He was quickly asleep again. Soon she could hear him snoring lightly.
Her mother had been a tortured woman. She dated anyone and everyone after her father had died in the war. Every month it was a new boyfriend. Every day it was a new bottle. Minnie’s silence lasted a total of twelve minutes before she started humming as softly as she possibly could. She hummed because it reminded her of the good that existed within her mother. And suicide left no goodness in its wake. She could practically see her mother’s face when she closed her eyes.
The old man barked, “Nurse! Nurse!”
The nurse came bustling into the room. “What’s going on?”
“This kid won’t stop singing.”
“I said I’m sorry,” said Minnie. She dabbed her eyes with her hospital blanket.
“I want to be moved to another room.”
“Calm down, Mr. Taylor,” the nurse said.
“I’m sick of playing Name That Tune. Get me out of here. Now.”
The nurse shook her head. “I can’t move you, Mr. Taylor. I’m sorry, but this is one of the only rooms in the hospital with power. We’re running on generators tonight, ever since Snowmageddon. Would you like some Jell-O?”
“No, I would not like some Jell-O. I would like to get out of this godforsaken hellhole.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” said the nurse as she left the room.
This time Minnie pushed her head into her pillow and tried to focus on something else. So she counted. Minnie was a famous counter. It was an obsessive habit. Her brain gravitated toward all things math. She’d always been this way. Before long, she had counted all the ceiling panels in this room twice. There were ten rows of seven on her side of the room. The old man’s side of the room had eight rows of six. Altogether there were 118 panels. The prime factors of 118 were 2 and 59. If you added 2 and 59 together, you got 61. Which was prime. So she’d done all she could do there.
She counted other things too. There were nine overhead lights in the room. Four lamps. There were 412 floor tiles. There wasn’t anything special about 412. She resorted to counting the freckles on her arms and had to stop when, thankfully, the nurse arrived with the food. She was hungry enough to eat a small lapdog.
The nurse placed trays of food on the patients’ swivel tables. Supper was two slices of ham doused in yellow gravy that resembled congealed phlegm. Since the plastic silverware was flimsy, Minnie ate with both hands.
The old man stared at her.
“Well, aren’t you a regular Emily Post?” he said.
Minnie ignored him.
“If you don’t slow down, you’re going to choke.”
Minnie kept ignoring him. She washed down her ham with a carton of milk, then she got to work on her mashed potatoes and corn bread. She started in on her green beans and used a remaining hunk of corn bread to clean her tray to a mirror polish. All that was left was her apple cobbler.
“I don’t know the Heimlich maneuver,” he said.
Minnie pinched another hunk of bread and wiped her plate.
“I’m just saying,” said the man, “that you’re on your own if your apple cobbler goes down the wrong pipe. Don’t blame me if you die right here, in a hospital of all places.”
The man grabbed a carton of cigarettes from the nightstand and tapped the carton against his palm. She noticed his hands were trembling so badly he could hardly hold the carton. Her mother got like that sometimes in the mornings.
“What’s the Heimlich maneuver?” she said.
“Keep inhaling that food and you’re about to find out.” He lit his smoke and took a deep breath. “What was that song you were humming?”
“What?”
“Singing. I’m talking about singing. What was that song?”
“Just a song.”
“You ever hear of Kitty Wells?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a who, not a what.”
Minnie said nothing.
“What’re you in for?” the man asked.
“Don’t know yet. Doctor said I got the sugars. I got a hematoma.”
He nodded.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’m here because I’m an idiot.”
The old man pushed his swivel table with his tray of untouched food toward the girl. The table rolled across the aisle between their beds and came to a halt in front of her. She just looked at it for a few moments.
“What’d you do that for?” she said.
“Because you’re hungry.”
Chapter 7
Dr. Ruark looked at Emily apathetically. There was no mercy in his face. No sweetness. Ruark had black irises that seemed to swallow the pupils. Shark eyes. Ruark had been the doctor who delivered her. He was a dry man with the personality of mayonnaise.
Ruark did not use flowery language to explain his diagnosis. No softening of the blow. He was old school. Doctors from his generation were not here to mollycoddle you. They didn’t pass you boxes of tissue and give you emotional support. If you needed comfort, you went to a preacher. If you wanted to cry in public, you went on the Donahue show. If you wanted facts, you came to your family doctor.
“Breast cancer?” she said.
He nodded. “Aggressive ductal carcinoma.”
“Aggressive?”
“This will kill you, Emily. That’s what I’m getting at.”
Emily felt her insides get cold.
“I don’t want to mince words. I’ve known you too long. This disease will not move slowly. You need to be prepared for that.”
Her blood stopped. Her hands were ice. She couldn’t breathe. The room was swallowed by the faint sound of the doctor’s ticking clock.
“Did you hear what I said, sweetie?” The way he said sweetie sounded foreign to his lips.
“There has to be some sort of treatment.”
“There isn’t. Not for this.”
“How about radiation? My aunt had radiation.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”
“What about chemotherapy?”
“What about it?”
“Isn’t that an option?”
The man heaved out a breath. “If it were, don’t you think I would’ve mentioned it? How long do you think I’ve been doing this?”
“What?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m surprised you haven’t seen me until now. Haven’t you noticed anything unusual going on in your body? Don’t you pay attention to your breasts?
“At this stage, your cancer has likely metastasized into other organs. It’s spreading. You’re a scientist, Emily; you know how this works. Your lymphatic system is probably struggling to keep up. In my opinion, a mastectomy would be a waste of your time. Chemotherapy will just ruin any time you have left. Radiation will destroy the quality of your life.”
She could not believe what she was hearing. “I don’t understand.”
The doctor straightened some papers on his desk. “Your biopsy is not good. That’s all there is to understand. You’re going to have to make some hard decisions. Bottom line: you’re going to have to accept this.”
None of this was making sense. It was like trying to make ten dollars out of four nickels. What was going on here? How had life shifted so quickly? One minute she was teaching biology, raising a kid, cooking a Thanksgiving feast. The next minute Dr. Ruark was using words like cancer and talking about “time you have left.”
“Are we talking years?” she said.
“Impossible for me to say. This isn’t my specialty.”
“But I feel fine.”
“You said earlier that you were fatigued. You said you were tired a lot.”
“I’m a high school teacher and a mother. I’m always tired.”
The room began to spin even faster. The doctor replaced his glasses and led her to the reception area. Dr. Ruark had the gall to tell her to have a nice day before she left.
* * *
Shug felt awkward in his old suit. He was sitting in the back seat of a Chevy Impala. Looking out the window. Constantly tugging on his sleeves. Fifteen years ago he had come to court in this same tan suit, which he’d bought from a secondhand store. It was his first and last suit. He’d never wanted to own one before. Never needed one. But his lawyer said he should have a suit because suits improve the odds of overturning convictions. The jury, it turned out, could convict guys in suits just as easily as they could convict guys in jeans.
When the driver reached the Ash County line, Shug instructed him to stop by beating a hand on the roof. Prison habit. The Chevy slowed to a halt.
“You don’t have to beat on my car, pal,” said the driver. “Just tell me to stop.”
“Sorry. Please stop here.”
“Here?”
“I can walk the rest. I know the way.”
“It’s nine o’clock at night.”
“So?”
“So it’s dark, and this is the middle of the woods.”
Shug opened the door and stretched his long frame. He was skin and bones. His belt was on the last hole; his trousers were falling off him. Once he had been thickly built. Now he was a skeleton with a size 30 waist.
