In Memory of Junior (7 page)

Faison showed up this afternoon.

“I brought you some mail,” he said, standing in the door. Then he just started right in talking, came on in like he lives here, you know.

“You been drinking?” I asked him. I could smell it.

“Couple of beers,” he said.

He started telling me about his Uncle Grove's footstone getting cracked in two when it was being shipped.

“Cracked in two?” I said.

“That's right. Cracked in two right down the middle. There was this brass plate won't harmed none, but that stone, man, was sure cracked in two.”

“Why was he shipping a footstone?” I asked him. At that moment, Faison
had
to be thinking about Junior's footstone, too. He couldn't be standing there talking about a footstone and not be thinking about Junior's.

“He wants me and Tate to set him up a place to be buried. That's all I know. So I guess we will.” Then he sat on the sofa, kind of looked around, casual-like. “Listen to this,” he says. “There was this dog barking out back yesterday. Been barking for days. So I go out there and this guy
acts like I'm the one with the problem. You know, your typical—”

“You want a Coke?” I knew he was getting into a long-winded story about something.

“Got a beer?” he says. He knows I don't have no beer.

“You know I don't have no beer, Faison.”

“Just give me some water, then. So,” he says, “this guy acts like I'm the one with the problem. This is the way people are all over the place. You point out a problem and it's
you
got the problem. You know what I mean?”

I told him I did. I do, too—because I know Faison Bales.

“But it turned out good,” he says.

I handed him a glass of water. Just like him, he hadn't said nothing about my place. Real nice little kitchen area. Just perfect, you know, for one person.

“So, anyway,” he says, “this turns out to be a pretty decent guy after all, and hell, I end up getting a chance to go hunting. Tomorrow probably. With the one I didn't think I liked. They were twins—Jimmy and Timmy. We're going fishing sometime too, probably.”

“You're going to get killed hunting and drinking, Faison. It's stupid.” He is very stupid that way.

“You know,” he says—he throws his arm up on the couch, getting really settled in—“I ain't been hunting since before, you know, Junior died.”

Something snapped. “Faison . . .” I didn't want to hear any more. Nothing.

“What?” he says. Real surprised-like. This stuff builds up in me when he's away.

“Faison,” I said, “will you please put that tombstone back? It's been over a year, and legally, it's against the law
to have that footstone out there with the wrong name on it. I ain't going to just forget it. You know I'm going to do something about it if you don't.”

“June Lee, let's don't get started on that.”

“You know I'll switch it back if you don't, Faison.”

“Shit, June Lee, you know I'll switch it back if you switch it back.”

“You lied to me, Faison.” He told me he'd never been married, never really loved anybody, all this.

“June Lee,” he says, “if I'd had the slightest idea it meant all that much to you, I'd a told you before I did.”

“You lie. You knew it would of made a difference and that's why you lied in the first place.”

“I didn't lie in the first place.”

“Come off it, Faison.”

“I think we ought to forget it. The footstone's in place and that was our agreement, June Lee. We made an agreement.”

“I ain't talking about the footstone, Faison.”

“Listen, June Lee, I want to ask you something,” he says. Going into his serious Mr. Lawyer mode. “Okay,” he says. “I just thought about this the other night. What if you
had
known I'd been married? What then?”

Faison has this way of letting his face go into these expressions that may or may not go along with what he's saying. And he'll find a spot over your shoulder and stare at that instead of look you in the eye.

“It was more than if I'd known you'd been married, Faison. You know that. But if I had known just that,” I said, “then I'd known I was marrying a honest man.”

I've had a hard time with men in my life.

“Honest, huh? I don't understand why it's so damned important about this stuff that's history. Sure, I was married. But it was a failure. I put it behind me. It was a failure. Like they say, you buy what you pay for.”

“You buy what you . . . ? Faison. And I don't know why,” I said, “it's so important for you to have a boy that won't yours in the first place named after you. That's history too, Faison.”

He stood up. “I got to get out of here,” he says.

“Good. Good. You just walk away from it, Faison. You always were good at that. Walking away. You'll be walking away when you die.”

That got his attention. He slammed the storm door so hard, the glass broke.

I yelled, “Which won't be one minute too soon!”

Thank god the Pattersons—upstairs—were gone. The glass fell on the outside, not the inside. Several big pieces. One leaned against the door. I just stood there—started biting a fingernail. I've been trying real hard to stop doing that.

Why couldn't Faison have been just a little bit more like Tate, and had some ambition, some sense about moving up in the world? If he'd been different then there wouldn't have been a fight that day, the day I started out in the car. Why couldn't he have just been a little bit different?

Can't live with him, can't live without him. Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.

At some point I'm going to have to change that footstone back myself. I know where I can find some help.

It's like Mr. Glenn more or less give up. I have to prop his back up with the pillows, then get his legs down off the side of the bed for circulation. He's lasted a long time this way, and Miss Laura she going down so fast, I think maybe he be the one to outlast her, instead of the other way round.

Miss Laura, she can stand on the floor and walk over to the window and back. We still do that twice a day. Once at ten and once at three. Social services all for that. But sometime it seem like she don't even know where she is. She don't even look out the window no more like she used to. She used to would stop and stand there a little while and mumble a little something. Now when she get over there she just turn around and head back like she be glad to lay back down.

She used to mostly talk about Mr. Glenn, about all she had to do for him for all that time before she got sick. She tell me about having to pick him up outen the bathroom floor and all that. She tell about other stuff over and over too. That's where he kept falling—in the bathroom. But
at least she had one of them high commode tops, which I didn't know nothing about while Lorenzo were down and out. You get a little bitty low commode down close to the floor, and you try to get a sick man, a dying sick man, down and then up off it without him toppling over in the floor, then you be doing a pretty good balancing act. You be leaning back with all your weight pulling him up and if your hand slip loose you go over backwards yourself. And once he topple down there on the way down, instead of on the way up, then you know where he gone shit. He gone shit in the floor. And who gone clean it up? Mr. Clean? Michael Jordan?

How bout them naming that highway after Michael Jordan? Pick my chicken. What that young whippersnapper done to get a road named after him except look out after hisself, doing what he love to do all his short life, big and strong with all that natural gift from God? What else he done? Seem like to me the one they name the road after would be somebody who done looked after somebody they
have
to look after—while they love the person but hate all that cleaning up and toting and heaving and lifting and shaving and wiping and feeding and scraping driedup stuff you don't know what it is off the floor and the table legs. Humph. And you doing all this when you ain't feeling so good yourself and ain't got enough money to buy no bed sheets and run plum out of energy but have to keep going anyway, no matter what.

Michael Jordan? You think he ever short on bed sheets? And if he ever been, you think he ain't more than made up for it? And they name the road after Michael Jordan?

I know Miss Laura she done a lot, because Lorenzo he
only lasted bout two and a half years after he got down. Mr. Glenn he lasted I think about eleven years. And them boys of his not much help. Course my chiren was the same way.

When I was growing up people took care of the old folks. We did, anyway.

What would get me down most is Lorenzo's bowels, you know. And then there's no worse smell in bed sheets than piss less it be bedsores. Lord a mercy I would
keep
sheets in the tub. I wish I'd had the washamachine that's here at Mr. Glenn's. If anybody wanted to know what I needed I'd say lord honey I could sure use a washamachine.

What about my little hallway with the cracks in the floor I travel back and forth on to the bathroom with my Lorenzo. Why don't the government pave that and name that after Michael Jordan? Sha. I just don't get it. A man make his living jumping up and down with people screaming all over the place and him making enough money to pave Hanson County three times over in gold-plated concrete getting a big four-lane highway named after him while at the same time hundreds of little women in North Carolina breaking their own backs scrubbing up after a sick, broke-down husband who done worried hisself down to a nub after sixty-five years of toting shingles and nailing roofs and these little women can't buy a pair of bed sheets cause they cost so much—you looked at the price of bed sheets lately?—and they don't have time to powder their nose much less wipe their
own
ass and they don't even get
their
names wrote down in a . . . a two-bit beggarman's matchbook.

The world is a funny place.

The problem is that people don't have the eyes and hearts to judge up on somebody like me or Miss Laura, but they shore judge up Mr. Basketball.

Law, I don't usually get riled up but sometimes I do. My son Lorenzo Junior's the one crazy about that Michael Jordan. We call him Lorenzo now, we used to call him Junior. He drove to Wilmington to pier-fish, told me about that road, that new 1-40 they made such a fuss over.

Oh yeah, speaking of Junior. Mr. Bullock, he name his two twin sons the same as him—William Dean, Jr., and William Dean, Jr. So, somebody say, what you call them? and he say, Billy Dean and Billy Dean, and somebody say, really, is that so? well, how you tell them apart? and he say, oh, one's a little darker than the othern.

Speaking of chiren, that teenager that spends the night over here brought her little boy the other night. She's got two I think. I didn't say nothing, but I don't think Faye would like that. She don't do a very good job, but it's hard to find somebody that do. I don't know what they pay her. She ain't much older than that boy of Tate's and got two boys herself. There ought to be a law against marrying before you're growed up.

Tate brought that boy of his over here for a visit this afternoon. Mr. Glenn always asking after him. And he always saying stuff to Tate like, “You been by to see Bette lately? You seen Ansie lately? You took Morgan by to see them lately? Bring him by to see me again real soon, Son,” and you can tell by the way that boy of Tate's walk that he ain't interested in setting the first foot on the first porch step to this here place.

He follow his daddy on in there, lagging behind, and Mr. Glenn see him and kind of light up and put out his
hand, and I wonder can he see all that hair and all them clothes with the holes in the knees, and that earring, and soldier boots, and stuff like that. Nobody in my family ever wore the first piece of clothing with the first hole in it or the first patch that show. I don't understand what get into their heads. What could make a child like that?

On the way to the airfield, Dad decided to stop by and see Granddad and then Aunt Bette and Aunt Ansie. It's like all these generations or something. He didn't say anything about going to see them until we got in the car and I didn't have a choice. I'm glad Mom doesn't have a bunch of relatives to visit. Especially old ones. It would be okay if there was something to do once we get there. But it's the same old stuff over and over. And then they beg me to come back—which would be okay with me if it was like
interesting.

About the time we passed Uncle Sam's Army Surplus, I thought about the stuff we'd been studying in history and all that stuff Mom told me about Dad's medal, so I asked Dad, “How many people did you know that got killed in the war?”

“Right many,” he says. He glanced over at me.

“What about the time you like won the medal?”

“I had a good friend who got shot down and I tried to save him but I couldn't find him on the ground. Some clouds came in and I couldn't see him. I could talk to him on the radio, but that's it.”

“Radio?”

“He had a hand-held radio and was trying to tell me where he was. Why are you suddenly interested in this?”

I told him we had some stuff going on in school about it. Actually I was wondering if he'd tell me the same story he told Mom that “broke her heart.”

We drove awhile. Then I said, “Is that the story that broke Mom's heart?”

“That's part of it.”

So I was like waiting.

He says, “I'll tell you all that when you're a little older. There's some stuff I'm kind of ashamed of, and it's all complicated somehow.”

So I wondered what could it be that I couldn't understand now? “What happened to him?”

“I actually, ah, heard them shooting him. Over his radio.”