Uncertain, TX: Chapter Nine

Previously… (Chapter 8 - read) or (Chapter 8 - audio) OR start from the beginning. Audio file to follow shortly, and read by me, the author, so you get that East Texas twang. (If it helps, I’m a former voice actor.)

After a week, Dana was able to get Cherry’s house to a comfortable-enough level of hygiene to stay there. Driving back and forth to her rental in Jefferson had become tedious, particularly as Cherry’s needs grew.

“If I choke to death in the middle of the night because your fancy ass couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping in your mother’s house, I’m going to come back as a ghost and haunt you.”

Packing up her things and dropping off keys was old hat to Dana, involuntary muscle memory before settling in a new place. Except it wasn’t new. Her childhood bed still squeaked when she flipped over in the night in search of a cool spot. The house still moaned and groaned in the wind. The glass bird on her childhood dresser still caught the morning light and threw a rainbow on the adjacent wall. Smiling at the sight of it first thing was another muscle memory, but it strained and ached.

In the morning after Cherry’s coughing stopped and the gossipy talk shows started, holding her mother rapt for a few hours, Dana would go for a run, loop around the town’s few paved roads to finish at Ronnie’s. He was usually found on the deck over the water with a cup of coffee and a smoke. After the second morning, she joined him instead of waving enthusiastically. The next day, he began setting out a mug for her, three sugars and cream, just how she liked it.

“That much sugar’ll kill you,” he said, drawing a long inhalation on his smoke.

“Hasn’t yet. Thanks,” she replied before taking a careful sip.

Ronnie nodded and set himself to rocking again. His movements were stiff, like his whole body was a tender bruise.

“You didn’t like living in New York, now, did you?”

Dana laughed at the disgust in his voice. A family of ducks landed on the water below, swimming in circles, evidently hoping they had crumbs to share.

“There were things I liked about it.”

Ronnie grunted.

“I liked the museums. I liked the restaurants.”

“Pfft. Come on, now.”

Dana sipped her coffee to hide her grin. “Well, the sort of restaurants that don’t serve our kind of food. They never get that right up north.”

“You’re real good at what you do, huh?” he asked. His face twisted into a grin, pressing the massive melanoma under his eye up to his eyelid, like a pirate’s patch.

Dana twisted to crack her back. “I—Yeah. Turns out I am. I’m good at finding mistakes, good at figuring out how they were made.”

“On paper.”

She nodded. “Still struggle to figure that shit out in real life, like the rest of us, I suppose.”

“Amen.” After a moment, Ronnie said, “Good to see you’re still you under that expensive haircut.”

Dana rubbed her hand up the back of her undercut and laughed softly. “Still me in there.”

“Still you. Good. ‘S all I wanted, you outta here, happy and safe.”

She flashed on a memory, her crying, terrified, as Ronnie held her tight, murmuring assurances. She shook off the odd sense of dread that conjured, and as she turned to leave, Ronnie’s chair stopped its steady squeaking.

“Hey, Girlie-girl. You come see me later today, you hear?”

Dana checked her watch. She needed to get back to Cherry, but Ronnie’s quiet solicitude was far more appealing as company, always had been. “Yeah, sure thing, Ronnie. Maybe after lunch?”

“Okay, Girlie. You know where to find me.”

Back at the house, Cherry was sitting up in bed, sulking. “You did that on purpose.”

Dana wiped her face with the hem of her shirt. “Did what?”

Cherry threw an accusatory finger at the remote on the floor.

The TV was on Cherry’s favorite morning panel show, the one where all the ladies yelled at each other and never let the other get a word in edgewise.

“So now you don’t like that show?”

“You took away my option to change it!”

“Oh for…” Dana scooped up the remote and dumped it at her mother’s side. “I’m taking a shower.”

“You stink like fish!” Cherry shouted after her.

Cherry stayed in a foul mood all morning, fussing and picking at Dana over anything and everything. The blankets made her too hot, but keep her feet covered, they were like ice. What did Dana have to go and shave the sides of her head for, like a man? Had she ever heard of a little makeup? All that running and weightlifting was giving her muscles. People could see them. Maybe that’s why she didn’t like men, she was trying to be one.

“Enough, Cherry,” Dana snapped.

Cherry, arms crossed in front of her and mouth turned into an almost comical frown, huffed so hard the canula slipped askew.

“You done being a nasty brat?” Dana asked, towering over her mother.

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

Dana rolled her eyes and jammed a bendable straw into her mother’s plastic tumbler. “You act like one, I’ll call you one. Now, you need to drink this. You haven’t hardly eaten anything this morning, and it’s lunchtime. Eat.”

Cherry twisted her face away from where Dana held the protein drink closer.

“Look,” Dana sighed. “Think of it like this: You need to keep up your strength so you can call me out. Really lay into me, I’m so ungrateful and mannish…” Nothing. Dana made choo-choo train noises, waving the container in front of Cherry’s face. “Is airplane better?”

“Oh, for crying out loud. I’ll drink the damn thing.” Cherry worked her mouth over the straw, glaring at Dana the whole time.

“Now you sit here—”

“Where in the good hell am I supposed to be going? Waltzing in Siam?”

“Hush. There’s a show you like coming on. I’m going over to Ronnie’s for a spell. Your phone is right here.” She indicated the flip phone her mother refused to get rid of within reach on the side table. “If you need me, just call.”

“I can’t call if I’m dead. I don’t know why you’re spending any time with that… that…lake trash.”

“Don’t call him that. He’s my friend.”

“Grown men aren’t friends with little girls.”

“Watch your mouth, Cherry. I’ll be back before your show’s over.”

It was quicker to cut through the brush to get to the marina than drive over. The path opened up to the parking lot, the same row of upside-down canoes for rent, the old johnboat up on tires. She could see Ronnie in his chair, deep in the recesses of the wraparound deck.

“There’s my girl.”

“Hey, Ronnie. You move at all today, you lazy bones?”

He sat eerily still in the rocker, no smokes, no beer. Normally he’d have a small army of empties at his ankles by midday. “Didn’t feel like it today.”

“Oh, yeah?” She gently laid her palm to his forehead. He was clammy. “Ronnie? You okay?”

“Am now. Don’t you worry ‘bout me, Girlie-girl.”

A tiny smile crooked up one side of his face. His eyes closed. Dana pressed two fingers to his neck where his pulse was thready, rapid like a bird.

“Ronnie? Come on, now, I just showed up and you’re gonna go to sleep on me?” She frantically fumbled her phone open, her free hand cupping Ronnie’s cheek. He slumped lower in his chair. She couldn’t get a signal on the deck.

“Shit. Shit shit shit.”

She held her phone out and paced until she could get a signal, then called 911. She gave the dispatch the address but knew by the time the ambulance arrived from Marshall, it would be too late.

She knelt at Ronnie’s side and held his worn, dry hands in hers. “Can’t you just hang on a little? For me?”

“Safe.”

She shook his hand, tried to keep him engaged, tried to get him to repeat what he’d said. “Ronnie, please. I don’t want to be here without you. I don’t want to be here with her without you.”

A frown crossed Ronnie’s face, his lips parted on a sigh, and his hand gave a twitch, as if he was trying to hold her hand. She burst into tears.

“Goddamnit, Ronnie.”

His shoulders slumped and his face cleared. His eyes had a faraway look to them. Dana laid her cheek on his knee and cried.

The ambulance pulled into the parking lot several minutes later. The EMTs quietly and efficiently laid him on a gurney and pronounced him dead.

“Are you his next of kin?” the young EMT asked. Her name was stitched onto her blue uniform. Jiménez. There was a thread loose in the letter J.

Dana shook her head no. “He doesn’t have any family. He’d call me his family, but I’m just his friend.”

“Good friend,” she said with a kind smile. “It’s good you were with him when he passed.”

Her partner sat on the interior bench of the ambulance, talking to dispatch via the radio at his shoulder.

“Do you want us to call you from the hospital? Does he have any funeral arrangements?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Give me your number.” She handed over a business card and pulled a pen from her chest pocket. “We’ll take him in and call the funeral home in Marshall. He might have a directive. They’ll know.”

Dana nodded, numb.

The young woman squeezed Dana’s arm. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Dana nodded, waved at the ambulance as it circled and pulled away, lights muted. She couldn’t say how long she stood there, staring at the porch. Long enough for the light to change.

“Shit. Cherry.”

She shook herself and knuckled away the tears staining her cheeks. Before she left, she had a flash of thought. On top of the ever-present cooler next to Ronnie’s chair were the keys to the marina. She scooped them up and locked the door, pocketing the keys. She’d wait to hear from someone official before turning them over. She couldn’t bear the thought of someone coming in and messing with his things.

The sun was low in the sky by the time she got back to the house, and it seemed the protein drink had done just what Dana had promised: Cherry was sitting up on her own without the aid of the bed, eyes lit with fury and clearly worked into a rage.

“I’ll be back before the show ends,” Cherry spat. “Just hopping over to see my boyfriend. I’ve been—”

“Ronnie’s dead.”

Cherry’s mouth hung open. “I outlived that little shit?”

The absolute glee that flashed over her face… Dana’s hand flexed at her side. She wanted to rip the pillow out from behind her mother’s head and smother her with it. Something must have shown in her expression as Cherry’s entire demeanor stilled.

“How did he die?” she asked, her “company” voice silky and fake as the flowers glued together at a roadside memorial.

“I don’t… He just died. He was in his chair, still.”

Cherry took Dana’s hand in hers, shook it a little. “Did he say anything before he… you know?”

Dana shook her head.

Cherry allowed her a moment to breathe then pinched the back of Dana’s hand. “Meanwhile, you filled me up with all of this and left me with no way to get to the bathroom.”

It was so much trouble getting Cherry to the bathroom, Dana decided they might as well make use of the trip and get her cleaned up in the bath. Cherry had a modified bench and hand-shower that enabled her to bathe with some measure of control.

“Do you need me to—”

“I don’t need you seeing my boobs, thank you very much.”

Dana used the time to change Cherry’s bedding and get her a fresh nightgown.

The morgue called as she was wiping down the bathroom, Cherry now sleeping fitfully in her room.

“Ms. Folsom, Mr. Burnett is in transport to Sullivan’s funeral home in Marshall. I was told to let you know.”

“Yes, thank you. Do I… I can call them?”

“You’ll most likely get an answering machine this late at night but leave your contact info and someone will reach out tomorrow. His wishes were to be cremated.”

The man on the line said it delicately. Dana guessed that in that deeply Christian and evangelical country there was an expectation of outrage. But knowing Ronnie, he wouldn’t have wanted the land or money wasted on a coffin. “Thank you.”

Cremated. No service. No way for Dana to send him off with the heartfelt gratitude for his quiet acceptance of who she was, the one adult from her childhood who had ever just liked her for own sake.

_{Next chapter on Tuesday, August 25th at 8am CT, with audio book at 10:30am.}

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