“So,” he said, his lips cracking, “who’s watching the dog?”
Theresa put a hand to her eyes and choked, and Bart put his hand on her shoulder and patted her, the gesture clumsy and stiff.
“Look at you. Your heart stopped.”
She couldn’t say any more, and Bart helped her into her seat. He came back to look down at Ray, and they stared at each other a long time. Ray put his shuddering, dry hand on his father’s arm. Bart looked down at his son’s hand and then raised his head, and Ray saw him smile. It had been so long since he had seen his father smile it was almost disconcerting, as if he had become someone else for a moment, but in another moment Ray was smiling, too. He shook his head and he raised his eyebrows at his old man, at what they knew about each other. Ray grabbed the skinny rope of muscle over Bart’s forearm, touching him where a heart was etched that had once been bright red but was slowly going green and black. It said caroline.
His father shook his head and said, “So that’s done, then?”
Ray nodded.
“You’re kicking now?”
“I figure they got me strapped down anyway.”
Bart nodded back, and his mouth opened and closed a few times like he wanted to say something else, but he just patted Ray’s hand.
“I know,” said Ray.
Bart held a hand out and took it back, then reached out again and touched Ray’s head, patting him with a big hand of rough skin and loose bones. “We’ll come back, and I’ll keep her from cooking for you for a couple days.”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
Theresa blew her nose, a long honk that echoed off the hard walls. “What’s wrong with my cooking?”
“Nothing, girl,” said Bart. “It’s just the boy can’t eat for a while.”
“I’m not an idiot, Bart. I know that.”
The shaking got worse, and Ray stuck his hands back under the sheet, sweat standing out on his forehead. Theresa stood up and held his cheek, and then they went out, Bart stooped and round- shouldered. Ray lay back and stared at the ceiling and bit his lips to keep from yelling out. After a few minutes of breathing through his mouth a nurse came in.
“How’s it going?”
He just looked at her, his eyes wild, and she nodded and lifted his gown to check his dressing. For the first time he saw the crisscrossed lines of sutures and dark blood that reminded him of barbed wire, as if an army had fought a battle ranging across the white expanse of his abdomen and left fortifications abandoned in the field. There was a red tube that he realized was blood draining from one of the wounds and a flaccid plastic bag taped over a hole in his gut.
The nurse went to the sink and wet a washcloth and put it across his forehead. He nodded thanks at her, not trusting himself to say anything. He put his hand in his mouth and bit the fleshy part and growled, praying to pass out. The nurse told him things looked good. She said there was still a risk of infection but everything really did look good. He nodded without speaking, and she shook her head and left. It was more than he could stand, and he wanted to scream.
HE WOKE UP again and it was night. He had a sense of days going by, but nothing changed except the light, so he wasn’t sure. He sat in the dark for a while getting used to himself, listening to the murmur of voices from the nurses’ station, and then a dark shape filled the doorway and Manny came in and stood over him.
“Hey, man.”
“Hey.”
“How you making it?’
“Not good. Not good.”
“Yeah, they giving you anything?”
“They wanted to. I told them no.”
Manny shook his head violently. “What the fuck, Ray? You’re missing your big chance here, man.”
“I’m trying to kick.”
“You’re what? Are you kidding?”
“No, I figure I can get straightened out.”
“Ah, bullshit.” Manny stepped close, his voice a tense whisper.
“What? I’ve been high for two weeks. I want to get clean.”
“You’re not an addict, Ray.”
“The fuck.”
Manny got closer, pulled a chair up, and folded himself into it, his shoulders hunched. In the dark Ray could see pinpoints of light in the lenses of his sunglasses. “I’m an addict. I been in and out of rehab like six times. I’m a fucking dope addict. My mom was a dope addict. You…” He looked over his shoulder at the bright hallway and figures going by. “You’re just, I don’t know. Fucking with yourself.”
Ray let out a long sigh and let his eyes close.
“You think you need to pay for something. Man, you paid. You went to jail for nothing, and your whole life was fucked.”
“A lot of people are dead.”
“Yeah, that’s fucked up.” He leaned in close, his voice dropping. “But you didn’t kill anyone wasn’t trying to kill you.”
“My head is full of it. All this shit I done. I can’t close my eyes.”
Manny watched him and then turned his head to look out into the bright hallway for a while. “Listen to me.” He turned back to look at Ray. “Listen to me. You ain’t like me. Or Harlan. Or Cyrus or any of ’em. You can get clear of this and get a life. That guy you killed’”
Ray shook his head no, but Manny kept going.
“That guy you killed, he cut an old woman’s throat and did worse for Danny. That doesn’t mean you give up being a human being. Shit, if a cop had been there he’d have done the same.”
“I threw it away.”
“No, see, the fact you even think this way? That means something. Man, I never had two minutes worrying about any of the things I did. I say fuck ’em all and I mean it. You got all messed up with your dad going up and then the accident and that girl dying and then you came out of jail all fucked up. This money we got? I’m just gonna burn through it. In a couple of months it’ll just be gone and I’ll be broke again with nothing to show for it.”
“What about Sherry?”
“I love Sherry, but she’s as fucked as I am. She talks about kicking, having a kid, about buying a house, but at the end of the day she’d rather get high and watch TV and eat takeout food. We don’t need that money. It’s just going to kill us faster.”
“What do I do?”
“Take the fucking money and go somewhere and do something. What do you do I have no fucking idea. I never been nothing but a convict or a thief. What ever you coulda been you better start being it now. Fuck, man, your heart stopped. Twice, Theresa said. And here you are, breathing and talking and shit. That means something.”
Ray shook his head. “It can’t be that simple.”
“It don’t have to be complicated. You’re thinking of the debt you owe? Then, I don’t know, own it. Do something good for somebody. That money had blood on it long before we walked into that house. You want to help somebody, that’s not wrong, but you got to help yourself. You got to want to. I remember enough of that crap from rehab to know you got to at least think you got a right to be alive, to get through the day. You did things wrong, do what you can to make things right.”
Ray sat and listened, his head cocked. It was the most Manny had said in years that wasn’t about wanting dope or girls or money, or getting dope or girls or money.
Manny grabbed Ray’s upper arm and squeezed it tight. “Somebody’s got to make it. We can’t all die off. Somebody’s got to get their shit together and get right.” He let go of Ray’s arm and grabbed his hand. “I got to go,
