Part 5 (1/2)

'Sorry. What he write?'

'You really wanna know?'

'Pray tell.'

'The dame he pledged his heart to turned out to be a German spy. She was so good at it he couldn't even hear a trace of Kraut when she spoke American. But because he was a patriot he poisoned her even though he still loved her. And carried her to the sea and threw her in.'

'That's when the whale got him?'

'Jeez, hold your horses.'

'Sorry.'

'Like I was saying, after he threw her in he-'

'Whitey?'

'What?'

'Can you let me out? I think I'm gonna be sick.'

Just then a light knock at her nursing home door.

'Who's that?' she says and throws what's left of her cigarette out the window and makes a fanning motion in the air with her thin hand as if that might make it all go away.

'It's me, Ma.'

'Joe Boy?'

'Who else calls you Ma?'

'Hold on a minute, I'm not decent,' she lies and shuffles on her walker after a spray bottle of Georgia peach air freshener she keeps in a drawer by her bed. Halfway there she loses heart and says to herself, What's the difference now? Then calls to her son, 'Okay, come in, I'm fit to behold.'

Entering with a smile on his face her tall son says, 'Well thank you, my queen.'

He looks at her here in the middle of this sad little room and when their eyes meet he finds something there he never saw.

'Were you smoking?'

'Yes, Officer,' she tries to joke. 'You caught me red-handed.'

'What's wrong, Mom?'

Bea doesn't answer right off. She turns her face away and shuffles to the open window. From here she can see the dogwood tree in the yard. Its white flowers, its branches in the easy wind.

'It's caught up with me, Joe Boy.'

The Deputy knows exactly what she means, but all he can bring himself to say is, 'What are you talking about?'

'I didn't wanna tell you till the tests came in and I was sure.'

'You're gonna die?'

'Not this minute.'

'When?'

'That's for the Great Spirit to know, not us.'

'Please, Ma, none of that mumbo jumbo. How long did they say?'

'He said if I do the chemo I have a shot at remission. Or at least kicking around another five, six years.'

'So when do you start?'

'I don't.'

'You gotta be kiddin' me.'

'No, Sir. Honest Injun.'

'How can you joke?'

Now her sideways smirk turns to something else. Now she looks her boy in the face, the afternoon light behind her, the breeze at her long silver ponytail. 'I don't know how else to make you feel better.'

And with that he starts to cry.

'Oh, Joe. Please. I don't wanna make you sad.'

Her tall son couldn't reply if he tried. That ache in his cheeks and throat, that dryness of the tongue and strange play of oxygen we've all come to know.

'The miracles of chemo. I seen enough. Hair of the dog. One kind of death for another. I guess I just figure your time's your time. In here you make friends, guys and gals down the hall. You sit together in the cafeteria, play bridge, crochet, maybe watch a picture in the TV room.' Here Bea takes a pause, and her eyes trail down, moist globes of memory, a war movie there, a chariot race, a starlet dancing barefoot on a windy beach, and says, 'Then one day you look and they're gone.'

Joe moves and sits on his mom's thin bed. Squeak of springs. Soft blanket. Faint smell of fake peach and dying. Now his cell phone rings: We will, we will rock you.

'Answer it, Joe Boy.'

He shakes his head, tears down the high bones of his Indian face. We will, we will rock you.

'Could be important.'

'It's my girlfriend.'

'The one that bought the Dairy Queen?'

He nods.

'Well, answer it then,' says Bea.

Joe does his best to compose himself. Then he flips the Motorola.