Mama went in first, Marleah next. My father was sitting up in the bed. His hands were folded over his belly. Mama sat near the foot of the bed, Marleah stood next to the dresser. When Mama called her over, she came. She let herself down in the ladder-back like my father was holding the chair for her. Leaning forward inches away from him, she took his right hand in one of hers. “How you feelin’, Mister Creel?”
“He’s doing real well,” I had to say. Paul Creel in his blue suit, the man in the photograph, what if he were here in his Sunday suit, would his left hand be flopping like a fish? But he couldn’t fit into that suit anymore.
“Mister Creel?” Marleah raised her voice. “Mister Creel, I came here to sing a hymn for you. What hymn would you like me to sing, Mister Creel?”
“You sing whatever you feel like singing,” Mama said.
My father’s left hand flopped like a fish. I couldn’t allow him to go on this way. I grabbed his left hand and stopped it. I dragged his right hand loose from Marleah’s.
My father gave me a look I’ll never forget. He yanked his hands away like I was contaminated. “Leave, Wayne! You hear me? Leave!”
I wish I hadn’t but I stayed where I was. My father glared out the window at the front yard, the mimosa out by the mailbox, the birdbath, Marleah’s white Honda Civic, Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s place across the road. He had his chin in his hand, his feet stretched out like he wanted to float away somewhere with Marleah floating with him. The air came on with a rush. Nobody said anything. Finally Mama signaled us to leave the room.
I walked Marleah on out to Mama’s marigold bed. It was hot outside. Marleah’s frilly white blouse was damp. Sweat streaked her layer of face powder. A butterfly flickered behind her. I heard a mocking bird going—joodeejoodeejoodee. I heard a car down the road somewhere.
Marleah looked at me hard when we got to her car.
“I only came because your mother asked me to. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Next time you come I’ll make sure I’m somewhere else.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Marleah said.
Marleah got in her car and drove away. Across the road Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s underground lawn sprinklers poked their heads up into Wyatt’s front yard, hissing, squirting out water. I could cross the road, keep going, get wet, plant my feet in Wyatt’s water-soaked grass. If I did that, would my father be watching me through the window he had on the world? What would he say if I trekked past Wyatt’s barbecue pit, the swing set for his two sons, kept on going, the hissing sprinklers behind me now, along with Wyatt, and Stephanie Kirkpatrick, Mama too, Sandy also, Wayne Junior? What would he say if, climbing over Wyatt’s chicken-wire back fence, on my way to the woods, the deep woods, the tall pines that would grow taller as more years ticked off my short life, if I were to do that, and, I told myself, I still might, would I be doing what Denny Maxwell had done, would, in my father’s view, I be doing something stupid? Or would I be doing what would please him most?
I felt the chair slats ribbing my back, a wedge of hot sun on my feet. I got up and moved my beach chair so it would get more shade from the sun umbrella. Settled back in with my diet drink, I watched my wife pat on more suntan lotion. When Linda leaned over to do her ankles, I saw the lines on her back from the slats of the chairs. The suntan lotion was gritty with sand so I decided I wouldn’t put any on.
We were the ones who laid claim to the chairs. There were two of them, close to the water. They were low-backed, legs embedded in sand, a ledge of wood connecting the chairs for our drinks and suntan lotion. The chairs were needing a paint job, and the nail heads in the slats were rusted. You saw chairs like these in front of cheap motels, three pairs, sometimes, instead of one. Here there was only one pair.
We had the sun umbrella from a beach supply store. It had a red stripe and a white stripe, then a dark blue stripe and more white, like one of those paint sample color charts where the colors are clear and bright. We had planted our umbrella in the sand before anyone else caught on to the fact that only two chairs were available here—I mean on the beach, not around the pool or arranged behind the lock link fence, where the chairs were clustered in twos and threes on the sun-soaked concrete apron. We laid claim because we got there first. But that is not to say we monopolized the chairs. We would vacate the chairs when we went out to lunch, when we took a nap late in the afternoon. We let other people use them too for the chairs were for everybody in the motel to share and share alike.
I was watching this man from Birmingham who spent most of his time in the water. His sun umbrella and beach towel—the umbrella had green and yellow stripes—were a few feet away from where we were, in the chairs, drinking our diet drinks. Linda was talking about quitting Lucille’s. She had worked for Lucille for too many years. She wanted a business of her own. She tilted her bright green plastic cup with the straw poking out of a hole in the lid. With my separation pay and my retirement we could move down here, get out of Georgia. I could say goodbye to Fort Benning. Linda might open up a florist shop down here.
“We’ll use the equity from our house,” she said. Linda patted my knee. “We can get a thirty-year mortgage. Don’t worry, it will all work out.”
It will and it won’t, I was thinking. That’s the way it had been in the past. For now, we could sit out here in the chairs. Out here close to the water, our financial situation looked good. I watched Linda open her magazine; then I folded my hands on my belly—still firm, not much fat down there. I watched a gull skim by with a fish in its beak.
We went out for dinner that night, and then we went to this country and western place. It had a combo and a singer that sang requests. She had a body on her and she could sing. We had a good time dancing, and when we were back in our room we made love in a way we hadn’t done for awhile.
The next day we went out for breakfast, and when we came back the first thing I noticed out on the beach was that the chairs were occupied. Another couple had taken over the chairs. They were young. I hadn’t seen them before. The backs had been lowered on the chairs so these people could sun themselves. The girl lay on her stomach, her head turned slightly to the right. She was wearing a red French-cut. From where we were, on the sun deck, those squares of shaded sand out there, those sun umbrellas were signaling me to take Linda back to our room for awhile. But I wasn’t about to do that yet.
“I give them another two hours,” I said. “Maybe more. Who knows?”
Linda looked up from her magazine. “Why don’t we go back to our room,” she said. “We’ll be cool and comfortable in our room.”
“This is no time to hole up in our room. Now is the time for us to get some sun before it gets too hot to sit out in it.”
“Well why not sit here and get some sun?”
“Come on. We’re going out there,” I said. “We’re not going to waste the morning up here.”
So pretty soon we set up the sun umbrella and lay out on our beach towels. After lunch we took a nap. I kept the drapes closed until we came out. It wasn’t us who readjusted the chairs so people could sit on them again. We waited for someone else to. We stayed inside until this was done, watching television after we woke up. Towards evening we went back outside. The chair backs had been readjusted. The chairs were chairs again. This joker and his girl friend must have gotten wind of the attitude here. Hogging the chairs wasn’t right—this certainly would have come through in the way other people would have looked at these two. Other people would have been willing to share the chairs. Other people’s wives wore one-piece bathing suits. Maybe what I was thinking got through to these people because the next day they were gone.
So the next day went all right. We made sure the chairs were available to whoever wanted to sit in them. We set our umbrella up some distance away, lay out on our towels, got