Four Hours in the Dark to Dad
“Home to what?” I asked. “He lives alone.”
She looked at my father over her glasses. “Mr. Pruitt, did you keep your cardiologist appointment in August?”
“I meant to,” said my father, which is what a man says when he has been caught.
“I’d rather he not be alone this winter,” the doctor told me. “I’m not telling you what to do. A social worker will talk with you tomorrow.”
When she was gone, my father studied the ceiling. “Roy’s boy is cutting my beans on the halves,” he said. “Moisture’s too high. He’ll get docked at the elevator.”
“Dad. Your beans.”
“Somebody has to worry about them.”
Then, to the ceiling: “I’m not moving to a home.”
“Nobody’s mentioned a home. We’ll talk. Not today.”
I stepped into the hall and called Tom.
He picked up before it rang a full time. I could hear the truck. He had left at eight, as he’d promised, with Josie in her car seat, because he had known, he said, that I’d say bring her.
“He knew me,” I said. And I could not say anything more for a moment. “Tom. He knew me. Bring her. Bring her now.”
“We’re past Jefferson City,” Tom said. “About two hours out. Should I stop for a balloon or something?”
“Bring her. Just bring her.”
They came through the door of room 412 at 11:50. I had told my father an hour before, and he had asked three times whether his hair looked right. I had combed it with my fingers.
Josie stood in the doorway holding her father’s hand, a small paper mask hooked over her ears because the floor was full of coughs this time of year. She is three and a half, with my mother’s chin and Tom’s wide-set eyes, and she was wearing her yellow rain boots on a perfectly dry day, because she had decided that boots were for riding in trucks.
She looked at the man in the bed. The wires, the oxygen, the clip on his finger. Three-year-olds don’t flinch. They study.
“Is that Grandpa Mel?” she asked, in her stage whisper.
“That’s him,” I said.
“The one with the rice?”
“That’s him.”
My father had not said one word. He was gripping the bed rail with both hands.
Josie let go of Tom. She crossed the room in her boots, thump, thump, thump. She stopped at the bed rail and looked up at him, and then she reached into the crook of her arm and held out a stuffed gray rabbit with one ear chewed flat, over the rail, as far as her arm would go.
“This is Biscuit,” she said. “You can hold him. He’s good when you’re sick.”
My father took the rabbit in both hands.
I have thought about this moment more than any other of that day. This man had stood with his hat in his hands at the funerals of everyone he ever loved. He had pulled calves in January and fixed every broken thing ever brought to him. And he held that chewed gray rabbit against his chest, and his face came apart, the way a field gives way when a levee goes.
“Thank you, Josie,” he said. It was barely audible. “Thank you, honey. I’ll take good care of him.”
“You have to give him back, though,” said Josie.
“I will.”