Jeff took everything in stride. Take the day he got the letter from the doctor telling him he did not have bladder cancer; that was the same day his Mother called to tell him brother Rodney was getting out of prison. The letter was good news. The phone call was not. Jeff took both notifications the same way: without emotion.
Jeff’s wife Teresa had different emotions, more normal you might say. “Good deal!” she said. That was when Jeff called to tell her about the letter. “That sonofabitch!” That’s what she said when he told her about the phone call. Jeff had never been able to explain Rodney to his wife. The brothers’ Mother always said, “He had a hard time after his Daddy died.” To her that was the reason for everything. (Jeff might be the younger of the two, but he was able to handle death, disappointment, distress.)
“Look, honey. Rodney is just Rodney.” That was all Jeff said.
` “Now, I want you to take me to that place to pick up your brother.” That was all the Mother said. There was never a question in her mind that Jeff would take off work and drive her to the prison. Just like she had expected Jeff to visit his brother and report back to her. The Mother wouldn’t go to “that place”. As far as she was concerned Rodney hadn’t done anything wrong, not then not ever. Jeff had tried to explain to her that Rodney had stashed marijuana in an old car abandoned by a ramshackle building on the back of the property. She said that was okay with her. It was not okay with the sheriff’s deputies who arrested Rodney for possession with the intent to sell. It was not okay with the judge who had a dim view of Rodney and his previous convictions. It was okay with the system that sent Rodney away for eight years.
“But this time, Jeff, I have seen the light,” Rodney said at the last visit. “I am getting out of here a lot smarter than when I came in.”
“So you’ve learned your lesson, huh?”
“I know all the mistakes I have made and I am not going down the same road again. Besides, I’ll be living at home with Momma!”
Jeff didn’t believe for a moment that Rodney’s words meant he’s sworn off drugs. As far as he was concerned, Rodney had learned enough while inside to avoid some of the mistakes that had tripped him up before. The Mother had said Rodney was a young man “finding his way” or “learning about life”. Even though she had been the disciplinarian in the family as soon as their Father died, Rodney became a golden boy.
“Know what I’m gonna do, Jeff?” Rodney said at that last visit. “I’m gonna fix up that old car down by the shed. Find the parts. Make a classic out of it.” The whole idea might not have made sense to many people. After all, Rodney had never had a driver’s license. “I don’t see why I need one,” was his standard line. Thus driving without a permit had usually been an adjunct to the other charges Rodney acquired over the years.
Jeff pictured the old car. The Father had bought it the year before he died. He had plans to restore it, too. Now the car sat next to a two story building that had stored tobacco, old furniture, building supplies and even served as living quarters for a hired man who worked with the family on the farm a couple of years. Jeff most remembered the oddly built structure as the place he and Rodney had experimented in flying.
That day they had climbed up into the top floor and knocked out a window. They had formed capes from tobacco cloth and tied them around their necks. Jeff was first to jump. He landed in a strange way, but looked up to see when his older brother would follow. Rodney ran back down the steps instead. “No. No. That was all wrong! “You’re supposed to grab on to the corners and hold on. The cape will be like a parachute.” Rodney untied his cape and started to the house. Jeff knew there was no need to ask if his brother was going to jump, too. If that had been in the cards, Rodney would have jumped right after Jeff. Jeff knew too there was no need to ask Rodney to help him up. Jeff had a sharp pain in his left ankle. Three days later when he finally spoke about it, Jeff was taken to the doctor. In time, he was able to get along without paying much attention to the limp he got from “flying”.
Teresa was thrilled that Rodney would be living with her mother-in-law. When Jeff had made a suggestion that Rodney might live with them for a time, Teresa had made a quiet statement that if Rodney came, she would not be there.
The day came that Jeff took off work and drove to the prison. His Mother got into the car and for once did not choose to tell him how to drive. She hummed to herself with her Sunday church patent-leather purse clasped in her lap. She was content to gaze out the window at the passing scenery.
Finally, “I think this will get your big brother on the right track.” Jeff could only grunt and take a sip of his very cold coffee. “He’s paid the price for his mistakes. Been in there a long time. Long enough for God to see the good in him.” Jeff neither hated nor loved his brother. A long time ago, he had utilized his “water off a duck’s back” attitude. He didn’t even dislike Rodney. It was like a preacher had quoted, “neither hot nor cold and I will spit thee from my mouth”. When it came to Rodney, Jeff didn’t know what else Revelation might have to say.
At the prison gate another biblical image came to Jeff’s mind.
“Oh my boy!” The mother sobbed. “My Rodney. You are now with me.” The prodigal son had returned.
“Hey! Mom!” Rodney tossed a small canvas bag to Jeff and grabbed the Mother. He hugged her, lifting her off her feet and swinging her around. When he set her down, Rodney gave Jeff and little wink, grabbed the woman around the shoulders and started walking across the parking lot. “Your car, bro?” Rodney didn’t seem impressed by Jeff’s five-year old sedan. “Old folks car, huh, Momma?” A smile was splashed across Rodney’s face.
For the next three months, Jeff worked, kept up with his chores and home and planted a little garden. Teresa was a good cook and the two of them liked fresh vegetables. Visits to the Mother were a weekly event. While Rodney had been locked up, Jeff checked on the Mother more often and Teresa went along. Now when Jeff visited he did so alone, even though Rodney was seldom there. “He’s got him a job selling cars over in Ellenville,” the Mother proclaimed. “He’s not doing it yet, but he’s going to making good money. You mark my words. He’s had a hard time since his Daddy died, but he’s going to be all right.”
Jeff didn’t miss his brother. After all, Rodney had not been a part of Jeff’s life for quite a while. He did notice that the Mother was fading. Having Rodney out of prison hadn’t had as much a positive effect on her lately. Jeff suggested she visit her doctor, but she tossed aside the idea. “I’m just an old woman, Jeff.” When he offered to take her, she still sloughed off the thought. “If I need to go to the doctor, Rodney can take me. If you took me, you’d have to get time off from work and all like that. He can work his schedule easier than you can.” If just seemed that Rodney wasn’t ever around to take her.
Months passed and finally Jeff insisted.
“She should have been here sooner,” the doctor said. “But I think when we start the treatments; we’ll see a major improvement.”
“Not going to be any treatments,” the Mother said. AS was often the case, she clasped her purse in her lap as if all things had been settled.
“But, if the treatments can help you…..”
“Not going to be any. You hear me?” Her small dark eyes danced when she looked to Jeff. “I’d probably be some sort of whattayoucallit? Guinea pig.” She pursed her lips and looked at the doctor. “I’m gonna die sometime. He knows it. I know it. He ain’t God. I ain’t either. Rodney’ll look after me till my time comes.”
The only true evidence that Rodney had even been around was the car that he had worked on. The machine had received major work. When Jeff visited the Mother, he had looked at the progress that seemed to be made almost weekly. On the drive to take the Mother home, Jeff wondered when Rodney had been working on the car, but that wasn’t his mindset on the drive.
“What if Rodney can’t look after you. Teresa and I can do it.”
“She don’t like me. Never comes with you when you come visit.”
“No. She does like you. She loves you.” He looked at the Mother. “She does not like Rodney.”
“She don’t understand him. She don’t know that he’s had a hard time….”
“Please don’t tell me he’s had a hard time since Daddy died.” He could only whisper.
“Well, it’s true!” she snapped. “You got along fine. Didn’t seem to bother you, but him…well it’s been different with him.”
“Well if it comes to it you can move in with us.”
“Not on your life. Nosir! I’m gonna sleep in my own bed.”
Going through town, she asked him to please stop at the drug store. She handed him a prescription. “It’s just in case.”
Without a word, Jeff took the prescription for pain medication and got it filled. When he got back into the car, she handed him two bills. “If this ain’t enough, Rodney will pay the rest.” He put the bills in his shirt pocket without looking at them.
When they arrived at the old home place, Jeff started to get out and help her. “No thanks. I’m fine,” she insisted. “You go on home, Teresa expects your.” Jeff didn’t argue. He just watched her walk slowly across the yard and up the three wooden steps. Just like it had been for years, the front door was unlocked. The Mother walked inside the house. The screen door and the inner door slammed at almost the same time.
He didn’t see any sign of Rodney. He wanted her to explain her condition to his brother sooner rather than later. As he drove away, he noticed that the old car was facing in a different direction than earlier. Maybe Rodney was around he thought.
That thought didn’t hold. The car stayed where it was, Rodney didn’t seem to be around. After a time, Jeff got the Mother to admit that Rodney had not been around except for a few days after the last trip to the doctor. Jeff called the car dealer where Rodney was supposed to be working. Rodney hadn’t worked there in a couple of months. The sales manager said that shop people were highly pissed at Rodney because he had borrowed tools and hadn’t returned them. Jeff got the idea that the man wanted Jeff to pay for the tools. He hung up before the man could get that point across.
Just after that, Jeff and Teresa moved into the old home place. The Mother was getting worse. To mention Rodney’s name even in passing was to promote a near death rattle to escape the Mother’s lungs. With adjustments in work hours, Jeff and Teresa were able to keep watch over the old woman. Visits to the doctor served to check the progress of the disease or as the Mother said, “How little time I got left.”
When the doctor told them it was time for her to go to a hospital, the Mother still refused. “Maybe at the very last, but not yet. ‘Sides when Rodney comes I want to be at home. He’s coming soon, you’ll see.” Jeff didn’t ask any questions in front of the doctor.
In the car however, he learned that the Mother had been sending money to various post office boxes all over the southwester U. S. That had gone on until she couldn’t get up from her bed to get to the mail box. She wouldn’t say how she got the idea that Rodney was coming home. This upset Jeff, but as usual he didn’t show it.
The days spun into weeks, then months. Teresa and the Mother bonded something that surprised Jeff. The Mother was still cool toward her younger son and Jeff didn’t mention Rodney at all.
One afternoon, both women were napping. The Mother in her bed and Teresa in a recliner close by. As Teresa told Jeff, she woke up just as the Mother did. There was no apparent reason. Working night shifts, Teresa’s sleep patterns were haphazard.
“I went to the bed,” Teresa told Jeff. “She looked at me and said, ‘Look after him’.”
“I asked her if she meant Rodney, and she shook her head and then just closed her eyes.”
Teresa had told him all this on the phone at first, and repeated it when Jeff got to the house. Jeff went to the kitchen and took a tall can of beer out of the refrigerator. He popped the can open and went to call the ambulance people. After he did that, he went outside to the front porch. He stood and looked for a long time at the ramshackle building and the shiny car sitting near it. He took a long pull on the beer, then stepped down off the porch.
He walked across the yard and into the weeds near the building. Peering in through an open door, Jeff found some tobacco cloth and tore off a long strip. He stuffed the cloth down into the gas tank using a stick to make sure it got to the fuel inside. When he could see that the gasoline was soaking back up on the cloth. He lit the cloth with his cigarette lighter.
Jeff walked back through the weeds, across the yard and just as he got to the porch steps there was a loud THUMP. He sat down, tipped up the beer again and watched the flames engulf the car and the nearby building.
Teresa came to porch and looked at him. “Bastard couldn’t fly either,” Jeff drawled. “Sure as hell didn’t need a damn car.” He drained the last of the beer while watching the flames.
The End
