Andy walked out the open doors and past the vegetable garden; the tomatoes were fattening up. He continued down the sloping land to Cypress Creek, a lazy slice of shallow water that coursed gently over river rocks and around limestone boulders and under bald cypress trees whose trunks snaked into the creek like long straws. He came up behind his father sitting in a rocking chair on a shady rock outcropping at the water's edge-his office for the last thirty-five years. A fishing pole stood against a nearby tree in case he spotted a catfish worth catching in the clear creek. He was strumming his guitar and singing softly, as if performing for the half dozen ostriches that grazed nearby.
Paul Prescott was tall and lanky as a fencepost with a gray ponytail and a neat beard; he wore old jeans and older cowboy boots. He could pass for Kris Kristofferson, and he possessed the same gravelly voice and the same songwriting ability. But Paul Prescott had never hit it big. Never gotten his big break. Never gotten lucky. So for forty-five years he had sung his songs at local joints in and around Austin, just him and his guitar. And his constant companion, Jose Cuervo.
Saturday nights at the Broken Spoke or Cheatham Street Warehouse or Gruene Hall, sitting in the back listening to his father sing and falling asleep in his mother's lap-those were Andy Prescott's childhood memories. Other kids had grown up watching G-rated Disney movies; Andy Prescott had grown up in honky-tonks with drunk cowboys and wild women.
It had been a great childhood.
Andy had met Willie and Waylon, Kris and Kinky, Ray Price and Merle Haggard-all the country greats in all the Texas bars. Paul Prescott had opened for all of them, but no one had ever opened for him; he had never been the headliner. When Andy was ten years old, he had been so proud of his father-a star singer up on the stage. By the time he was fourteen, he understood that his father wasn't a star. By eighteen, he knew his father would never be a star. Andy Prescott had always figured on following in his father's footsteps-not as a singer, but as a failure. He wondered if Russell Reeves would be his big break.
His father paused his singing, coughed hard, and spit blood.
Paul Prescott was dying. He was sixty-five, and he had outlived his liver, as he put it. In fact, he had killed his liver with tequila. 'Alcoholic cirrhosis,' the doctors called it. His scarred liver could no longer adequately absorb vitamins, produce proteins that enabled his blood to clot, or cleanse his body of toxins. He needed a new liver. Without a transplant, he would eventually develop a fatal case of bacterial peritonitis or suffer hepatic encephalopathy and slip into a coma, or the scarring in his liver would cause his blood to back up and he would bleed to death.
His father was one of seventeen thousand people on the national waiting list for a 'cadaveric liver transplant'-a liver from a dead donor. He had been put on the list a year before, and the doctor said he would be on the list a year from now. Only six thousand people would get a liver in the next twelve months; his father would not be one of them. Alcoholic cirrhosis patients sat at the bottom of the waiting list.
Donated livers are allocated first to those transplant patients classified as 'Status 1,' which requires they be in the intensive care unit with a life expectancy of less than seven days. But by then it is often too late; only half of Status 1 patients survive a year after a transplant. Which seemed stupid: livers go to those patients who are least likely to be saved.
His father's only hope-and Paul Prescott struggled with the moral dilemma of hoping that someone else's life would not be saved so his would-was that a donated liver not match the blood type and body weight of the Status 1 patients in the Texas region; only after those patients were ruled out would the liver drop down the list, first to those patients in the region with a life expectancy of less than three months, then to those with longer life expectancies, and finally to the alcoholic cirrhosis patients. The odds were not good.
His father figured on dying.
But he had never complained; he said he had no one to blame but himself. And at least he had health insurance and could get on the waiting list; uninsured patients could not. Ability to pay was a qualifying factor: a five-year-old child without insurance dies; a seventy-five-year-old man with insurance lives. Paul Prescott said, 'Life isn't fair. Sometimes that works for you and against someone else; sometimes that works for someone else and against you. But life is always unfair to someone.' Andy's father had long ago accepted the fact that life was not fair, even if his son had not. Andy walked closer. His father's soft voice became clear.
'Honky-tonk heroes, we're a dying breed now, The world's gone corporate and the music has too, Honky- tonks are history and their heroes will soon be, But their music lives on in the magic of CDs.'
'Sounds good.'
His father's fingers froze on the guitar strings; he turned and smiled.
'Andy, my boy. How're you doing, son?' He squinted into the light. 'You get in a bar fight?'
'The trails. I like that one.'
'Might work. Better write it down.'
His father jotted in the little notebook he carried with him these days. Forgetfulness was a symptom of liver disease.
'Used to sing thirty songs a night. Now I can't remember one all the way through.'
His father cut his own CDs at an Austin studio then sold them in local stores and at his performances. He hadn't sung in public in two years. He wanted to cut one more CD before he died. He finished his notes and faced Andy again.
'You get a job?'
'No.'
'Why'd you cut your hair?'
'Oh. I got a client.'
'You cut your hair for a speeding driver?'
'I'll tell you later.'
Andy squatted next to his father; his skin glowed yellow in the shards of sunlight that cut through the cypress canopy above.
'How're you doing, Dad?'
'I'm still singing… to the birds anyway.'
Andy felt the tears come into his eyes. His father ran his hand over Andy's short hair.
'Son, don't cry for me. If it ends now, I've got no complaints. I've had a great life. I've lived life my way and I made music my way. I've had thirty-five years with the best woman I've ever known and twenty-nine years with the best son I could ever have hoped for. I only hope you get a woman as good as your mother and a son as good as you.'
'Dad, I'm a traffic ticket lawyer.'
'You're a good man, Andy. You've got a good heart.'
Andy wiped his face.
'Son, I'm not rich or famous either, but I didn't need to be. I needed to sing my songs, but I didn't need to be a star to be happy. You can't buy happiness in a store, Andy. You live it. I have. I did exactly what I wanted to do every day of my life. I've loved and been loved. That's as good as it gets in this life.'
Andy was close to blubbering uncontrollably, so he said, 'Mom says it's time for lunch. Tofu burgers.'
His father groaned.
'Damn, not tofu again. I need meat.'
'Not in that house.'
Paul Prescott pushed himself out of the chair; it took some effort. Andy would have helped, but that always annoyed his father. He had never required help.
'What do you say, Andy? Let's you and me sneak into town, get us a big ol' cheeseburger and French fries.'
His father swallowed a bite of his tofu burger.
'Mighty good, Jean.'
She gave him a 'Who do you think you're kidding?' look.
'Been reading about liver transplants in India, says I can get a liver sooner over there. And cheaper.'
They were on the back porch eating the tofu burgers and sweet potato fries and drinking iced tea. Andy never drank beer in his father's presence.
'Seems like everyone's going to India these days-for call centers, wombs, livers…'
