do if you did retire?” And my father would say, “I’d go fishing.”
After church my father used to tell Marleah Willis how much he enjoyed her hymn singing. Marleah was married to Buddy Willis at the time. Buddy used to sell Chevrolets, but after the two of them split up he moved to Columbus and started his own used car business.
Marleah Willis could really sing high and sweet, and when she did a solo for the congregation, my father would lift his head up and close his eyes, her voice taking him where he wanted to go. He’d sit on the end of the pew so he could get out quick when Marleah came our way. When he complimented Marleah on her singing, heads turned, people noticed it. He wasn’t tall but he was broad in the shoulders He had a gut on him then. He could put away steak and potatoes and corn on the cob, fried okra, a dozen catfish, so he took up a lot of space in the aisle. He’d be pointed one way, toward the altar, and Marleah she was on her way out of the church, the traffic backed up behind her, Marleah trying to get past him, knowing she had to say something back. She’d say, “It’s sweet of you to say that, Mr. Creel.”
Every Sunday it’s sweet of him, Sandy would say, and Mama she’d snap her pocket book shut and shove her hymnal back in the rack.
Mama had talked to Marleah after church because my father, he wanted Marleah to sing a hymn for him, and Marleah said she would come over in the afternoon. She didn’t want to, that was clear. Marleah scooted the piano bench under the piano, closed up the hymnal, and looked the other way from Mama. She looked at me once, me with Sandy, like I’d better be just another married man. Then she went over to Reverend Hatcher. Smoothing out the lumps in her sky blue dress, Mama headed up the aisle toward the pulpit.
That Sunday Mama talked to Marleah in church, I was still thinking about what had happened at Jack Lazenby’s annual Fourth of July barbecue. Jack held it behind his house, which was half a mile down the road from the convenience store he owned and ran, The Lazy Bee—Lay-Z and a striped bumblebee Sandy tells me is called a rebus.
We were sitting around Jack’s barbecue pit, the chigger patch Sandy called it, digesting barbecued pork—y’all come but bring your own lawn chairs and Chigger-Red—that was Sandy’s view of Lazenby hospitality. Marleah was sitting next to me. She was telling me about life without Buddy. They’d been divorced for nearly a year now. She’d had to haul the garbage to the garbage pit down the road, wasn’t that fun, and keep the lawn mowed. Buddy wasn’t making cigarette runs for her Winston One Hundred Lights and his Marlboro One Hundreds.
Big Jack was shooting off bottle rockets. Fire one, he’d boom out, fire two! I heard them whooshing out in the dark, popping over the pines. Marleah shook her last cigarette out and crumpled the pack. “I’m thinking that’s my last Winston, Wayne.”
I’d smoked my last panatela, but I wasn’t about to be her errand boy. I said I wasn’t used to making cigarette runs. She tweaked my shirt below the elbow and said she would go with me. Sandy had gone to the bathroom. We might be back before she missed us.
I decided to stop at the Lazy Bee. Marleah went in with me. We both used the restrooms. Then Marleah bought two packs of Winston One Hundred Lights. I bought a five-pack of Phillies Panatelas.
After I parked at Big Jack’s place, Marleah said she didn’t want to go back to the party right away. We could hear firecrackers popping and crackling down the road. Marleah moved closer to me, and I heard her catch her breath. I put my arm around her, stroked the back of her neck. She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, and then she put her head on my shoulder. Having her close to me, I wanted that to last.
We kissed again, this time tonguing, then I was biting her lower lip. She pulled away from me, I knew I’d gone too far. I hadn’t known when to put the brakes on.
She smoothed her skirt out. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea.”
Without moving an inch, I pitched my voice into casual. “Far as I’m concerned, nothing happened.”
Marleah said we should get back to the party.
When we got back, Marleah went right over to Dottie Lazenby. She listened to Dottie talk about their trip to Disney world and Epcot Center. Sandy said to me, “You missed the bottle rockets.”
A week went by. I couldn’t get Marleah out of my mind. I even called her house from the parts department, but all I got was her voice on the answering machine. That same day after I got off work Sandy told me she couldn’t sit with my father this evening. She asked me if I would sit with him. She was taking Mama to Walmart to stock up on trash and garbage bags, laundry and dishwashing detergent, a long list of household items substantially cheaper at Walmart than they are at Winn-Dixie, Sandy said, when I asked her why go across town to Walmart when Winn-Dixie was two miles down the road. I was wishing Sandy didn’t have the summer off from teaching, that way Sandy would have been been at Beauregard High, not here asking me to sit with my father while she took Mama shopping on her day to sit with him. I took six garbage bags out to the car and opened the trunk and stashed them.
I brought the radio to the bedroom and plugged it in. We got a rundown on the ball games that afternoon and some stuff on the Braves game coming up, then some call-ins, then gospel. It wasn’t long before we were playing the leg game. My father’s left leg would fall off the bed. I’d intercept his foot, taking care to avoid his toenails, catch his ankle, and hoist the leg back up onto the bed. He would lower it and I would raise it again. We played the leg game without saying much. Are you comfortable? I’m okay, Wayne.
Through the bedroom window, across the road, I saw Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s wife, Stephanie, come around their house driving a lawn tractor. She was wearing a halter and loose-fitting shorts. She raised her hand once and patted her hair. The next time I tried to lift up my father’s leg he wouldn’t let me. “Leave it be, Wayne.” So I let it be.
On Saturday I drove by Marleah’s house. She was outside moving a lawn sprinkler away from the mailbox. She gave me a fluttery hand wave and smiled. I waved back but I didn’t stop. I drove on over to the Lazy Bee and picked up a six-pack of Diet Coke. There was a telephone outside the Lazy Bee. I thought of calling up Marleah then and there, why not, hey Marleah it’s Wayne, I’m down here at the Lazy Bee and thought you might be out of Winston One Hundred Lights. On another Saturday, I might have done it. But on this one I was scheduled to sit with my father.
Mama was outside weeding her marigold bed, and she looked up when I came up the front steps, my feet crunching down on the welcome mat, and she said Wayne Junior’s in there with him, Wayne.
My father was sitting on the side of the bed. He had Wayne Junior’s Walkman on. He had his legs spread and his hands on his butt, tapping one foot on the carpet. When Wayne Junior saw me coming, he slipped the earphones off my father’s ears, trying not to upset him too much. Wayne Junior put the earphones over his own tender ears, waiting for me to start in on him.
His voice was going, “Gimmee that, Wayne.” Wayne Junior looked at me for direction and I told him to turn the damn thing off.
My father’s hands weren’t on his hips anymore, he was on his feet, he was doing this ballerina twinkle toe step across the bedroom and out the door. We caught up with him in front of the TV set, channel surfing with the remote.
After Mama talked to Marleah after church, Marleah came over to do what she promised she would do, sing a hymn for my father, whatever hymn he wanted to hear. My father wasn’t wearing a diaper. He had a T-shirt on, khaki pants. Mama had cut his toenails.
While Mama went on back to the bedroom, to tell my father Marleah was here, I was talking to Mama, in my head—why does this have to happen, how sad can this get? Don’t you understand, Mama came back in my head, he just wants to hear her sing.
Marleah was standing in front of my father’s unit map. It was just us, in the living room. “I’m really not sure I should do this.”
“Do what?” I chanced it. “See me again?”
“I told your mama I’d sing for your daddy. I didn’t think you’d be here, Wayne.”
Marleah