Rust on the Razor Read online

  Somewhere over Tennessee I put my hand on his and said, “We’ll do what we can.”

  “I wish I could do more.”

  “I know. We’ll be there soon.”

  He sighed. “I barely remember when Grandma and Grandpa died. I was little, and there hasn’t been a death in the family since.”

  “Who was at the hospital today?”

  “Mama and Shannon and Nathan. I wanted to get down there, not talk, although now I wish I’d spoken with Mary.” Scott and Mary are the two oldest children. He has two younger brothers and one younger sister. All of them are married except Scott and his younger sister. He also has a mass of nephews and nieces, many of whom he hasn’t met because of his refusal to return home, but he keeps a special calendar with all their birthdays on it and always sends them gifts. None gets returned but he only gets thank-you notes from Mary’s kids. I mentioned to him once that he might think about cutting off the ones who didn’t send notes. He said, “I blame the parents, not the kids.”

  “How do you think they’ll respond at a time like this?”

  “Mary will be supportive. I don’t know about the rest of them. I hope they forget our differences and want to concentrate on helping Daddy and Mama.”

  I like Mary a lot. She and Scott are very close.

  “Headlines like this week’s won’t help. I don’t know how much any of them ever really discussed my sexual orientation. Mary said Mama and Daddy never brought it up. She tried to talk to Hiram once, but he refused to discuss it.”

  The difference in the acceptance of our sexuality between my family and his had been made more glaring by my family’s eager reception of him and the near-total silence from his. Several years ago Hiram, the brother next closest to Scott in age, had written him a letter saying he never wanted to hear from Scott again.

  As we neared Atlanta, I watched a huge thunderhead off to the west. Jagged edges of lightning flashed in the distance. “I hope we don’t land in that,” I said.

  He cast a farm boy’s eye on it. “I don’t think it’ll hit for a while,” he said.

  We landed in sunlight, but by the time we emerged with our baggage, black clouds and bright lightning covered half of the western horizon. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of trying to outrace a storm. Luckily, our charter pilot told us that all small craft had been grounded.

  I suggested we rent a car. While I filled out forms and played with plastic, Scott called the hospital. There was still no change.

  When we stepped outside the airport and into the humidity, I almost gasped. My shirt immediately clung to my body. This was cloying, clinging dampness that made walking torturous as your clothes tried to stick to every inch of your skin. I’d served in the Marines in Vietnam, and the memory of that burst back into my awareness as we strode through the humid air.

  We threw our stuff in the trunk. The first thing I did after I started the car was figure out the air-conditioning. I set it to winter, and in a few minutes the atmosphere in the car approached bearable. The clock in the dashboard actually worked. It was just after eight, and I reset my watch. The vehicle had only twenty miles showing on the odometer. The new-car smell was almost pleasant.

  By the time we left the parking lot, the sun had set. The wind was up, and a few minutes after we cleared I-675 on our way south, lightning flashed in the night sky, wind buffeted the car, and fat drops of rain splattered randomly on the windshield.

  “Gonna really come down,” Scott said.

  “At least it’ll cool off,” I said.

  Always cooler after a rain? Wrong again, midwestern boy.

  An hour south of Atlanta the rain swept down in torrents for fifteen minutes. An announcer on a Macon radio station told us this bit of downpour would barely dent the drought they were having and was too localized to do the farmers much good. What I saw out the window sure looked like the deluge to me.

  During the rain our speed barely rose above forty. We passed through Henry, Butts, and Monroe counties.

  Moments after the downpour stopped, I pointed to a salacious advertisement emblazoned on a huge sign on the left side of the road. “Did I just see a scantily clad, full-breasted woman on that billboard announcing ‘Adult Delights’?”

  “Myrtle’s Exotic Café. Been there since I was a kid.”

  “A billboard like that on the interstate in Georgia? I thought this was the haven of fundamentalism and purity.”

  “It’s heterosexual, so it’s okay.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  He wasn’t.

  I lowered my window to enjoy the cool breeze.

  “What are you doing?” Scott asked.

  Clinging humidity fought with the car’s air-conditioning. “I was going to enjoy the after-storm coolness.”

  “Not here.”

  I waved my arm outside the window. I half expected it to move air. I rolled the window up.

  “How did you survive summers here?”

  “Same way you survived bitter cold Januarys as a kid. We enjoy the mild winters and endure the heat in summer. When you’re young, you don’t notice so much. Now we turn on air-conditioning. In winter you turn on heaters. Same principle.”

  “Sort of.”

  We took the first exit south of Macon and turned east. One of those rental-sign deals with movable letters greeted us at the bottom of the exit. Brighter than the lightning had been, the sign announced: “Jesus Saves—Garage Sale Saturday.” A plethora of signs lined the road. A few had bright smiling Georgia peaches; several advertised Vidalia onions; and one hawked something called orange-blossom honey. Assumedly honey made from or with orange blossoms? I asked Scott.

  “I always thought it meant honey made from bees that were only allowed to feed on orange blossoms.”

  “They can do that?”

  He shrugged.

  We ate at a nearly deserted Shoney’s a quarter of a mile from the interstate. The friendly waitress did not recognize Scott. I hadn’t said anything on the way down, but I was worried about the recognition issue. We were gay men in rural Georgia, and while I didn’t think the Ku Klux Klan would come riding through the night to lynch us, I wasn’t all that sure. I’d heard enough horror stories about the religious right and the rural South to make me uncomfortable. The newspaper machine next to the front door of the restaurant had a copy of the Bibb County Gazette—“Your Weekly Newspaper.” Under a picture of Scott throwing a baseball, the headline read: “Local Sports Star Gay.” The photo showed him standing on a baseball mound against a background of high-school bleachers.

  After our meal, we drove in darkness with lightning flashing off to our left and far to the north. Trees rose on both sides of us. Unlike the Midwest, where you can see lights in the distance and feel the spaciousness around you when driving through the countryside at night, here the sides of the road were close and impenetrable. Lights shone only in lonely homes located near the road. Through every small town we traversed, I scrupulously observed the speed limit.

  I wanted to keep Scott’s mind off his father somehow, but I didn’t want to fill the night with endless chatter. What was the point? I just hoped we found Scott’s father alive.

  “Lots of historical markers around,” I opined after we’d taken ten minutes to pass through the twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit of a county seat.

  “Sherman marched through here during the War of Northern Aggression.”

  “The what?”

  “That’s what my history teacher called it in high school. She never permitted anyone to call it anything but that in her presence.”

  “The Civil War?”

  “Yeah. Each marker gives details about what troops of what division and what battalion stayed next to what creek and what hill.”

  “They want to remember Sherman’s march?”

  “They want to preserve every fact of anything historical. Winning and losing is another matter.”

  “Oh.”

  We journeyed through Bibb, Twiggs, Wilkinso
n, Washington, and finally into Burr County. I pointed out the Burr County sign to Scott. “They named a place after a famous American traitor?”

  “This is Angus Burr, a hero of the American Revolution. Did something noble in saving people from the English someplace on the coast that was not Savannah.”

  Several miles of silence ensued.

  We finally entered the city of Brinard, the county seat and the population center nearest to his parents’ farm. A huge banner was draped from the Rexall drugstore to the courthouse welcoming all the returning grads of Jefferson Davis High School. I slowed down, and Scott gave directions to the hospital. On first sight the notable buildings in town were a Waffle House and the undoubtedly equally exotic Huddle House, both of which seemed to be your traditional greasy spoons, while the more modern variety was well represented by McDonald’s, Burger King, and Subway. It was well after midnight, and we didn’t see anyone in the town. Not a car moving through the flashing stoplights. No one tooling around the courthouse square.

  The hospital surprised me. It was a four-story, modern edifice. A lit sign proclaimed the emergency-room entrance. Light from round globes shone on dusty pavement. Insects sang and owls hooted as we hurried in.

  “Only hospital for miles around,” Scott said as we swung open the doors.

  The reception desk was closed. We followed corridors of red brick and yellow tile to the emergency room for directions. A lone nurse sat filling out forms. As we approached, she looked up from her paperwork.

  When Scott gave his dad’s name, her whole expression changed, but she made no comment. She merely gave us directions, but I saw her reach for the phone as the elevator doors closed behind us.

  Scott’s dad was in the cardiac care unit. Upstairs we followed the directions on posted signs to the CCU patient/ family lounge, where Scott used a phone to call the actual unit. No one answered. Scott didn’t hesitate: he strode purposefully through the doors to the unit. I followed.

  None of the nurses was on duty. Most of the rooms were empty. In one cubicle an elderly woman slept peacefully. Outside the last room on the left we saw a sign with “Mr. Carpenter” typed neatly on it.

  We entered the room tentatively. Light from the machines hooked up to Scott’s dad cast their blue and green light. I saw blips and heard occasional beeps. One machine read out numbers in red numerals that fluctuated between the high sixties and the low seventies. A tube entered one of his father’s nostrils; wires were attached to his chest; and an IV ran to his wrist.

  Scott stared wide-eyed at the machines. His dad stirred for a moment but did not waken.

  I wondered where everybody was.

  Scott approached the bed. “Daddy?” he whispered. “Daddy?”

  The side rails on the bed were up. Scott took his father’s hand gently and held it. With his other hand Scott carefully pushed back the sparse gray hair on his father’s head. A few moments later his father’s eyes opened. Scott whispered, “I love you, Daddy.”

  “Scottie?” his dad murmured.

  “I’m here, Daddy.”

  The man sighed contentedly, closed his eyes, and slept. Scott leaned awkwardly over the rail and hugged the sleeping figure.

  He pulled up a straight-back chair next to the bed and sat in it while holding his father’s hand. He stayed like that for the longest time. I stood in the background, unwilling to break the passing of time with words or gestures.

  Abruptly, a male nurse appeared in the doorway, saw me, and shattered the serenity of the moment by demanding, “What are you doing here?”

  “Singing opera arias,” I said. Somehow, when faced with officiousness, I have a tendency to give smart-ass answers.

  He spoke with a southern drawl—as did everybody. I’m not going to keep mentioning it; you can assume they did because everybody had an accent. Even Scott’s got more pronounced the longer we stayed.

  Scott stirred and the nurse took note of him.

  “Who are you two?” the nurse asked. “You can’t be here.”

  Scott walked over to us. We both towered over the man, who seemed to be in his late twenties. He had a small mustache and a rounded belly that bulged under his white uniform.

  “I’m Scott Carpenter. This is my father.”

  “Oh.”

  “The sign in the lounge said visiting in cardiac care could happen anytime, but no one answered our call.”

  “I was on break.”

  “Isn’t someone supposed to be on duty all the time in cardiac care?” I asked.

  “We only have two patients.”

  “While my father is here, it won’t happen again,” Scott said very quietly. “I don’t know where my family is, but one of us will be here from now on, and so will someone from the hospital staff. I’ll talk to your supervisor in the morning.”

  “You’re trying to bully me.”

  “If my father dies because of any kind of neglect, the least of your worries will be the lawsuit with which I will take every penny you could possibly earn for the rest of your life.”

  The nurse glanced around the room with his eyes finally coming to rest on me. “Is he part of the family?” he asked Scott.

  “He’s Tom Mason. He’s my lover,” Scott said. “He’ll stay if I want him.”

  “Not if the supervisor says he can’t. Only family in here.”

  “Where is everybody?” Scott asked.

  “Mrs. Carpenter and her daughter went to the machines in the cafeteria to get some coffee a while ago. I thought I’d be back before they returned. I’m sorry. I apologize. Still, the only people allowed in cardiac care are immediate family. When your mother and sister return, he’ll have to leave.”

  I could see Scott preparing to be stubborn. I didn’t want a fight, but I wanted to do whatever I could for him. The phone buzzed on the nurse’s desk. He hurried the eight feet to answer it. He listened for a minute and then said, “Only two at a time.”

  In a minute Scott’s mom entered the room. She leaned on Scott’s sister Mary’s arm. Scott hurried to her, and they embraced.

  “It’s good to see you, son. So good.” Mary hugged the two of them simultaneously. His mother gave me a warm smile and patted my arm. Mary thanked me for coming.

  “What’s happening, Mama?” Scott asked.

  “You can’t all be here,” the nurse said.

  “What needs to happen,” Scott said, “is for me to get a status report from my family, and if necessary, from available medical personnel, which I assume is you, and you are going to be very helpful and pleasant.”

  The nurse hesitated. Scott turned to his mother and sister. “Any news?”

  They shook their heads. “They want him to rest. The doctors won’t be sure for a while what to do. They may want to operate. They don’t know how much damage has been done to his heart.”

  “He recognized me,” Scott said.

  “He hasn’t wakened,” Mary said.

  “It was just for a second.”

  “Is that good?” Mrs. Carpenter asked the nurse.

  He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the doctor in the morning.”

  “You okay, Mama?” Scott asked. “Shouldn’t you be home trying to get some sleep? Mary and I can stay tonight. Tom will drive you home.”

  She smiled at her son. “Your father and I haven’t been apart a night in forty years. I’ll stay for a little bit. I slept for a while earlier, and I can nap on the couch in the waiting room if necessary.”

  “I just got here a bit ago,” Mary said. “I’ll stay. Shannon and Nathan were here all day.”

  I melted into the background as they discussed logistics, which son or daughter would be expected and when, who was keeping which parts of the family informed.

  “Do you have a place to stay?” Mary asked.

  We shook our heads.

  She offered her home.

  “You’re too crowded as it is,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “And you’re too far away. They will stay at the house with me and your dad
dy.”

  Scott spent the rest of the night sitting with his dad. I stayed with him for brief intervals. Mostly, I read my book or counted holes in the tile of the ceiling of the waiting room. Once I escorted Mrs. Carpenter to the lounge for a nap. I chatted with Mary for half an hour in the hall and brought up orange juice, candy bars, moon pies, and RC cola from the machines in the basement, depending on who wanted what when. Around four, three teenagers spent half an hour on the waiting-room pay phone making frantic calls. A nurse came and led them away to another part of the hospital.

  An hour after dawn, the nurses’ shift changed. I was half-dozing next to Mary when three people entered the waiting room. Mary introduced them as Hiram, who’d written the nasty letter, and Shannon, a sister of Scott’s. The third was a woman in her sixties, Sally, a distant cousin.

  Sally nodded to me. Hiram and Shannon ignored my outstretched hand. They both had Scott’s piercing blue eyes. Hiram was in a gray polyester suit. Shannon wore a long-sleeve light-peach blouse and a calf-length dark-green skirt. She wore absolutely no makeup.

  Scott joined us. “The doctor’s here. We can meet with him.” I held back, but Scott took my arm and said, “You come too.”

  We met his mother in the hall and entered a conference room, full of furniture made of blond wood.

  After we were all seated the doctor said, “I just examined Mr. Carpenter.” The doctor was an attractive man in his mid-thirties. He had a small mustache, a slight stoop, a thin torso, and the most wonderful green eyes, which looked carefully at each of us as he spoke.

  “We admitted him because he was having the signs and symptoms of having a heart attack. He will be in the cardiac care unit while we monitor him and give him some blood tests. We won’t know anything for sure for a day or two, until we get some of the tests back. We have to find out how much damage has been done. At times a person with mild symptoms has massive damage; sometimes it is the reverse.”