clump of grass, along with his wishes, and spun the green stalks into the air. A lazy S, the bottoms of the stalks waved like flags in the sky above him. He sat there in the chair, one hand balled into a tight fist, the other’s nails dug into the rotten wood. Memory poured down on him like hard rain. Behind a curtain of pines and cypresses, a pair of eyes watched, and something listened.
A few days later, Doc rose, feeling more tired than he ever did. More tired than all those years ago when the nurses had stuck him so full of needles that he thought he’d turned into a pin cushion. “Y’all done drew so much blood, now you gon’ have to give some back,” he’d said, but the men had only smiled. Whatever they knew then, they didn’t speak, and what they told him later he wished it was a lie.
Now Doc’s whole body felt like he fell down the stairs and hit every step on the way down. He kept waking in the middle of the night with soil all over the thin white sheets and clumps of dirt all up in his hair. Doc didn’t know what he had done or where he had gone. He took the dirty sheets and held them like dark secrets, balled them up like fists, and hid them under his bed. He tried to bathe, but he couldn’t get himself in the lukewarm water before Rachel arrived. He could hear her fussing at the front door. His whole body flushed with embarrassment.
“Doc? Oh, Doc!” she cried and tossed the keys into the amber dish on the old phone stand. “Where are you?”
On Rachel’s best day, her whisper was more of a shout.
Doc fumbled with his pants so long, he tired himself out, had to sit on the toilet seat just to catch his breath. He grabbed a yellow Bourbon & Bacon T-shirt and pulled it over his head. His beard got caught in the neck. Doc untangled it with his fingers, then stroked the white strands straight and smooth until the ends curled into cottony wisps.
“There’s something in the blood,” he muttered. Doc had known for over a dozen years that something more than memory coursed through his veins. His body was full of poison. They all were. Those with good sense had already gone and got out.
“Doc, you hear me?”
He took a deep breath before Rachel could come around the corner, bustling with those big hands that didn’t know nothing about being ginger. He heard her hand jangling the knob at the door.
“Girl, why you always tryna bust in on me?” he asked. “You know this doxin got me moving slow.”
“Dioxin, Doc,” Rachel said and laughed. “And ain’t nobody trying to see nothing you got!” She put her bike helmet away and fluffed her flattened hair.
He opened the door and waved away her helping hand. “I got more than plenty.”
“Come on out of here, Daddy,” she said, and chuckled, opening the window. “It’s stuffy in here and too hot today to be fussing. I done cooked this food and I need you to eat it,” she said, side-eying his linen-less bed, “so I can get on back to work.”
“Y’all still protesting?”
Rachel sighed, forehead nothing but a crease. “Some of them still out there. Not as many as before.”
“Ain’t gon’ do no good,” Doc said. “You can’t shame the shameless.”
“Well, I don’t know one way or the other,” she said and bit off a hangnail. “It is good to know somebody still trying …”
“Even if these muthafuckas ain’t listening?”
“Daddy!” Rachel said. “Don’t start up again. Last time you made a ruckus, your pressure went up.”
“My pressure didn’t go up, my patience just low!”
“Exactly! And either way, we got to get these coins, so …”
Doc stiffened, lowered his voice. “I ain’t mad at you, baby girl. You do what you can. And I appreciate it. I’m just saying …”
“I know, Daddy. I know.”
Doc stared out the window, frowning at the silhouette that overshadowed his land. He raised a clenched fist up and covered the water tower with his knuckles.
“Did you crank the truck?”
“Not yet,” she said, and watched him lower his bony arm to tie his robe around his waist.
“When you gon’ do it?” he asked. “When I finally get ready to go, I want to be able to get on down. Big Daddy can’t crank hisself.”
“Soon, Doc, you act like I’m getting my nails done here.
Let me clean up this kitchen after you eat, and then I’ll start up Big Daddy. You and I both know that ole truck is just fine. Big Daddy gon’ outlast both of us. Besides, you been up and about, I see. But you looking frail. Don’t you want something to eat? Don’t look like you ate all day.”
Doc scratched his beard, avoided her eyes. “Not hungry.”
“Doc, you got to eat. Can’t be sitting up in here, nibbling on leaves, and that jug of water still half full.” She clapped her hands, brass bracelets singing like wind chimes. “I’m going to fix you something extra, for later tonight. Put some meat on them bones,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with my bones,” Doc whispered, muttering under his breath. “Ground is wrong.” He mourned his garden and his empty fields, soured burial ground of what used to be. His last crops had come out so scraggly, he finally gave it up. Yield so bad, neither a weevil nor a worm would want it.
Anyone that knew him knew his family’s roots had run deep in that land. Now he and Rachel and that rust heap he called a truck was all that was left. Outside, the wind whispered and sounded like somebody was calling his name. He wrapped the robe tighter around his waist and peered through the window. Nothing but shadows and wind. And that poison plant’s tower.
He glanced over his shoulder and remembered the muddied linen he had hidden. No need to worry Rachel. Besides, he had no idea where he had been.
When Rachel came in with that smile of hers, the smile that never quite covered the worry in her eyes, he decided he would go ahead and eat whatever she had taken the time to make. No sense adding his worries to hers. The girl had enough.
“This is good,” Doc said, licking his fingertip. “I don’t think I could eat a mite more.”
Rachel took the tray of pancakes from him and frowned. “You ain’t ate nothing but syrup!”
Doc shrugged and drew the sheet around his shoulders. He couldn’t seem to get warm. “I’m sorry, Slick Bean. Ain’t had much appetite. Them hotcakes are good, but whatever I eat these days feels funny in my throat.”
Rachel grunted. “Funny, huh?” She shook her head and eyed the empty Aunt Jemima bottle, as if she might answer back. “You ain’t getting a fever, are you?”
Doc waved Rachel away. “Go on, girl. Don’t want you to be late.” He lay his head on the flattened pillow and closed his eyes, whispered all night in his sleep.
