By Dan Glover
8/9/00
I live on a hilltop. It is peaceful and lonely up here and I like it that way. Here at this window I can watch the storms roll in over the valley; vast curtains of rain that seem to hang motionless in the air until, gradually, the undulating draperies move in closer and engulf the world in motion, the tree tops swaying violently and screaming above the sound of the rain. I sit and watch the winter-dead valley turn green in the spring, little by little, until it fairly bursts with the something ness of life; the summer of life.
Everything just is down there in the valley. Simply is. The rains come and go and the sun shines brightly when the clouds roll away. From my hilltop, I watch the people about their business, hurrying here and scurrying there. Dead people all; hoping that by hurrying along their way, death might forget them for a moment or two. There is no chance of that. No one cheats here, not when it comes to the real thing.
I visit the dying from time to time, down in the valley, those I know, those who have been here for me in some fashion throughout my life. None of them really accepts the dying as part of living; they fight it, one and all. Memories of my uncle Alamo come to me. Alamo died hard as the doctors and nurses sat and watched, taking turns, as the cancer ate him up from inside. The hospital called me at work one day and said Alamo was asking for me, so I just dropped what I was doing and got ready to go.
The boss said, “Hey, Lowe, where you think you’re going?”
“The hospital called and said my Uncle Alamo is asking for me so I got to go see him.”
“Well, if you leave now, don’t bother coming back.”
I left. Never did give a care for that lousy job no how. It was cold that day and my car turned over slowly while I prayed it started. Finally it did. I got to the hospital as soon as I could in that old car with no heater.
I’d been up to see my uncle only a day ago but the gauntness of his appearance struck me fresh when I walked in the room. Alamo had never been a big man and the disease had wasted his features until he resembled nothing more than a corpse lying in the bed. He waved me over to his side when he saw me, his arm hanging weakly in mid-air a trifle long, as if to summon some small favor.
He said, “Did I ever do anything to you?”
It rather surprised me but without really thinking about it, I said, “Only something good, Alamo. Only something good.”
“Then will you help me now?”
“Yes, I’ll do whatever I can for you.”
“Stop the pain.”
“Didn’t you have your shot yet?”
“It doesn’t help any more. I tell them but no one cares.”
“Who did you tell?”
“Everyone: the nurses, three of them; no one will help me. That’s why I had them to call you at work. I knew you would help me. Hope I didn’t cause you no problems.”
“No problem at all, Alamo. I’ll be right back. Let me see if I can rustle you up some of that help.”
I walk down the shining hallway to the nurse’s station.
“My uncle is in pain and needs help.”
A nurse looks up from her work, pinkness around her face showing her perturbed in my bothering her. She said, “And your uncle is...?”
“Alamo Lowe, in room 420.”
“Well, let me check... yes, he’s already had his shot, not two hours ago. He’s scheduled for another at noon.”
“But it’s not even 10 yet... and he’s in real pain. Can’t you give him something stronger?”
“No sir, not without doctor approval.”
“When will the doctor be here to see him?”
“Well, let me see—she checks her chart—ah yes, he’s already been here this morning so he won’t be back here until sometime tomorrow morning. Probably really early.”
“Tomorrow morning? You mean Alamo has to suffer until then?”
“Well, I do wish there was more we could do….”
“Where’s your supervisor?”
“Sir, I am the nurse’s supervisor.”
“No. I mean your supervisor, your boss. Don’t tell me you run the whole hospital...”
“Please have a seat and I’ll let you speak with him.” She was put out with me but I was past caring.
I sat looking down the shining hospital hallways, watching all the people come and go, some who I recognize during my visits here, others just strangers. A woman weeps as she walks down the shining hallway, consoled on either side by a younger man and woman. I watch them and share their pain briefly. Someone speaks abruptly and disturbs my reverie.
“Can I help you sir?”
A large man stands in the doorway. He is sweating slightly the way big people sometimes do, his shirt is damp under his arms, and his aura glows a faint red, no doubt from the nurse’s recitation of our earlier conversation.
“I hope so. My uncle is in room 420, and he is in terrible pain. He told me that he informed three different nurses about it but no one will help him. I promised I would.”
“Well, you see, there’s only so much we can do.”
“I don’t doubt that one bit. But can’t you make him more comfortable?”
“Let me take a look at his chart. Why don’t you come with me.”
We walk down the shining hallway to room 420 and the large man walks over to Alamo’s bedside, picking up his chart and approaches the dying man on the bed.
“Can you hear me sir?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I see you’re scheduled for another shot in about two hours. Try holding on until then, ok?”
Alamo just groans, and I just lose it.
“What the hell do you mean, wait two hours? Are you crazy, or what? Look at the man! He’s dying, for Christ sake! And you have the means to ease his suffering? And you’re not doing it? What the hell!”
I reach over, grab the chart from his sweaty pudgy hands, and look at it.
“Fuck this goddamn Demerol you’re giving him. Hell, that’s ok for toothaches but Alamo is dying! Can’t you see that? Let’s break out the heavy shit. Now.”
“Now, calm down, sir. There’s no need for hysterics.”
I see a frightened look on the large man’s face, his faintly red aura now replaced with a quavering yellowish blue one, and I go into another rant. By this time, I am past remembrance. I suddenly realize someone is screaming, yelling, and just as suddenly realize it is I. By now, a large group has gathered in the shining hallway, probably wondering what this madman is going to do next. A rather large woman nurse appears holding a hypodermic needle. For a fleeting instant, I think she intends to use it on me and I start to back away. She laughs a big hearty laugh.
“Oh it’s not for you honey. This man is suffering and if no one else will help, then I will. I heard you hollering all the way down in ICU. This here morphine will ease him some.”
She slides the needle into Alamo’s IV and in seconds his face becomes peaceful and he breathes easier than I have seen him breath in weeks.
“I’m just a PA but I’m going to change Mr. Lowe’s chart. Do you hear me, Mr. Lowe? We’re going to ease you some.” Alamo nods. To me she said, “We’re going to see that he gets the morphine hypo every four hours and I’m ordering a drip in case the pain comes back in between.”
“Won’t the doctor be pissed?” I ask.
“Not in this case.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. If there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”
I suddenly remember the large sweaty man and turn to look for him but he has mysteriously disappeared, so I sit back down and look at Alamo. He sleeps as I watch his features, easy now and not contorted in pain. I talk to him though I know he’s not listening and if he were, I would not be speaking these words. Funny how death brings out what life will not.
“The moments drift, Alamo, don’t they? Long ago moments I experienced, where are they now? Is that where you are now? Drifting in the moments? Throughout my life some of my dreams came true and some didn’t and I see now that none of it really mattered at all and in fact the things that did really matter I passed by, carelessly, as if they would always be there for me to come back to. Experience doesn’t work like that though. It’s a one-time deal. No second chances. Those people who I wished I could have known better but never had the time, well, those people are gone now, and I will never have the time, ever; not in this life.
“I suffer when I see suffering, when I see those I love suffering, like you, and even those who I don’t know at all. I see how things are, I see how they could be, and somewhere in between I discover that I have lost my way. Hell, we’ve all lost our way. Worse, I have failed to clearly define the path I have chosen and so there is no way back home again. I thought I would remember all the twists and turns that have been taken but intellect doesn’t work like that, at least not for me. Somehow, I suspect I’m not alone though. And so here I am. Here we are. No one here needs us around yet we have nowhere else to go, so here you sit, suffering my words just a bit; words to a man who has come to the end of a long journey and yet knows not how to rest. Don’t you feel that way just now, Alamo?”
He doesn’t answer, only goes on sleeping. What do promises to the dying mean, anyway? Who are we really comforting?
I smoke. So it came to pass that I happen to meet an old man on my way to procure cigarettes at the corner store by the hospital. I say meet, but that may be too loose a word. He sat outside a Catholic church, on an old bench that looked as if it were ready to fall over any second. He was weeping and speaking low, to no one in particular, but as I was within hearing distance, the words fell upon my ears and drew me in. I pause to listen.
“She had tears in her eyes the last time, for she knew, we knew, our parting was as deep as the ocean that she had never seen. We couldn’t bring ourselves to say good bye, but pretended this parting was like any other we’d experienced. It wasn’t. Now it’s too late. I watched the light go out of her eyes and the world grew dark as one last tear trickled down her cheek. I held her just a while before calling the nurse.
“Can you tell me, God, if you are there, where does such sorrow come from? Was it always there deep inside of me, waiting to surface? Elephants weep, they say, but surely if they felt such exquisite sorrow as we they would all fling themselves into tar pits and off cliffs rather than face such anguish and there would be no more elephants to weep, to bother the universe with tears of uselessness. What keeps us from doing the same? I wish I knew. Fear, maybe, yes, fear.
“I wonder. Sometimes it seems as if my life never really happened at all. There’re no statues of her anywhere and no one seems to know my name. What I know, no one else cares to know, or so it seems. I reach out and no one is close to me, yet were they ever? Did I ever let them get close to me? I was always too scared to really let anyone in. I see that now, and now it’s too late. Why do things always work out like that?”
Suddenly the old man realized his lament of sorrow was falling upon someone’s ears other than God’s and he looked at me through tears, ashamed and alone. I turned and started to walk away before he could say anything and I furthered his shame but something grabbed me in some indescribable place and made me turn around to look one more time. The old man still sat there with his head down, silent now, tears dry. The church door behind where he sat suddenly opened and a small child appeared, running into the man’s arms, calling out “Grandpa! There you are!” I guess God heard his prayers after all.
Alamo died two days later. I remember a cold wind blew the day we buried him on a lonely hilltop behind the church him and Aunt Virginia used to take me to when I was a boy. No one came to his funeral but the preacher and me. The rest are already there on that hilltop, waiting. The Grandmas and Grandpas, and Daddy and Mamma, and Virginia, and Pearl, and Elmer, and Clyde, and Yolanda, and Betty, and Jim, and the list goes on and on. They saved a spot there for my bones too, when I weary of the world, but I expect I have a spell to go here yet.
Those old cloudy moments pass and I am back at my window, looking out at the valley. Sunshine pours down now through the clouds like the fingers of God. I see they’re butchering a pig down at the Miller place. I can watch the goings on from here on my hilltop. A large pile of intestines lay in a steaming heap by the creek. I see near naked kids of all ages running back and forth to the squishy pile, pulling the intestines inside out over green sticks, then running to the creek and washing the shit off before putting the stick over a large fire and roasting the intestines, then eating it greedily off the stick before running back for more. Those kids look as if they’re in heaven.
I decide to walk down to Miller’s and get myself a slab of that hog. The Miller’s are poor people and they remind me of my own family, long ago. As I walk along the path, I remember the time my wife and I gave our son his first bicycle. It was used—we didn’t have much money in those days though we worked all the time—but we fixed it up, me and her, together, and bought new pedals and new handle grips and painted it and it looked nearly new—those sunny moments... like that one. His eyes just lit up when he saw the bike and realized it was for him. That single moment in time, that one glimpse, made all my sacrifices worthwhile. All the days of slaving away for an ungrateful company who’s only goal is the bottom line.
Now our son is grown and gone, and has his own life to live. My wife is now my ex and I find myself alone, once more. Alamo’s been dead now near on twenty years, long dead, long buried, but not forgotten. He must have had those sunny moments too, moments that made all the suffering somehow bearable.
I stumble and strike my shin on an outcrop of rock, nearly bringing tears to my eyes. The rock marks the boundary of the Miller place—a large chuck of concrete, stuck vertically in the ground. The large slabs border the whole farm.
“Hey Mr. Lowe, you come for some pig?” I hear a voice say, before I can make out the speaker. A bush separates and two little twin boys step out.
“Hey Tim and Jim, what’s up?”
“You hurt yourself.”
“Yeah,” I say, as I rub my shin, fighting tears it hurts so bad. “I caught it on that chuck of concrete sticking up there.”
“I wish Daddy’d tear them out.”
They look so much alike I never know which one is which, so I never address the twins directly by name.
“Your Daddy around, boys?”
“Yeah, he’s up to the house.”
“He got any dope?”
“You know he does.”
“See you boys later.”
The way to the house winds down through an old barnyard. More kids come screaming past me in a line. Adults stand in groups scattered here and there, some I know, others I don’t. The house sits in a little hollow just past the tree line, almost seeming to squat in the now gathering darkness. It seems empty and I enter without knocking.
“Anyone here?”
“Yeah, come on in.”
I walk down the hall and enter the kitchen. Jim Miller and his brothers Ronny and Booters are sitting at a table. In front of them lay a sawed off shotgun, some two feet long, and a .44 caliber pistol, along with a large assortment of liquor bottles, mostly empty.
“See you’re roasting a pig.”
“Yeah. You come to get you some?”
“Maybe. I need something else more though.”
“I got that too.”
He pulls out a large bag of weed from under the table.
“How much you need?”
“Oh hell, maybe an ounce.”
“Tell you what. Come by and help me trim some of my harvest next week and I’ll give it to you for nothing.”
“Sounds like a deal to me. What day?”
“Monday.”
“I’ll bring beer.”
“This is shit kicking stuff, man. I’m telling you, it’s been a good year for growing dope.”
“As good for growing hogs?”
“Hell yeah. Long as the prices stay high.”
“You boys not planning on robbing a bank or anything then.”
They all laugh.
“This here belonged to Daddy,” Jim explains, holding up the sawed-off. Old man Miller had died just a few months before. “And this,” he said, hoisting the .44, “This belongs to Steve Maunders. Old boy owes me near a thousand bucks and this is all he had worth a shit, so I took it till I see some green, know what I mean?”
The group broke into another laugh and a bottle of Chivas Regal is in my hand. I take a long pull, then another, and feel it take its effect, bursting warm in my belly and running straight to my head. Later we all walk outside and help ourselves to big heaping slabs of pig, then sit by the fire and watch the day turn night. The kids have partied all day and now it’s time for the adults to get down; not for me though.
I slip away into the night, head still buzzing from the Chivas and Miller’s good weed and with a belly full of pig. Back on my hilltop, I sit and watch the night deepen in the valley and listen to the composed silence all around me.