Yellowcake Read online

  The man who considers himself unfit for combat flying or who is considered unfit by the flight surgeon or the unit commander is obviously inefficient.

  He remembers those words from his flight manual. He didn't get them then, and he doesn't now. If a man considered himself unfit, wasn't that efficient? If an unfit man considered himself fit, now that was inefficient.

  Well, he tries to be efficient. He never takes two steps where one will do. He steps off the curb and crosses Supai, stops at the chainlink fence, and stares into Desert View Cemetery. His breath is shallow now, the waves in his chest just offshore. He thinks about the breath worming through his shriveled lungs. A respiratory therapist at the hospital advised him to visualize his breath: "Can't catch your breath? Try to see it. Visualize it. It's white, healing air running through you."

  He has a headache brewing. He ought to sit down and visualize his breath. He walks a little way along the fence and lets himself in by the side gate, which is never locked.

  Rosy says it's morbid that he likes coming here, but he has liked cemeteries ever since he was a little boy. Rosy says that's the Irish in him. He is the self-appointed captain of a troop of deaf-mutes. The skeleton crew. They'll do exactly what he says. He says, Sleep. That's an order, boys.

  There's a boulder near the gate where he likes to sit He lowers himself carefully, holding on to his tank for balance, and leans back against the fence. His legs are shaking. He curls them up toward his chest, planting his feet solidly on the ground, then checks that the plastic oxygen tube is in his nose.

  He can't help wondering about Rosy's timing. Why have this test done a month before the wedding? What if it's positive? Had she thought about that, about what kind of wet blanket that would throw on the festivities? No. She doesn't think. She's got her lists of things to do but never really thinks of the repercussions.

  He's sorry he let Rosy talk him into these tests, these doctors. His mother hadn't believed in doctors. She said doctors make you sick. She was a great believer in mind over body. If he or one of his sisters came down with a cold, she'd say, "Go to your room and get rid of it," though if the illness was serious, she took on the battle herself. There was a scarlet fever epidemic in Durango when he was a kid. The hospital set up a quarantine unit, and many children died there. His sister Frieda got the fever, but his mother refused to send her away, believing that the hospital would be her morgue. She'd sent the rest of them—he, his sister Natalie, and their father—to his aunt's house. She stayed with Frieda. He can remember going by the house every day to wave to them in the upstairs bedroom where Frieda was confined. The two of them looked so happy, Frieda holding up her books and dolls, nothing to do but play. He remembers being jealous of his sister getting their mother all to herself. When Frieda got better, his mother scoured the house before she let them come back, and she burned all of Frieda's books and cloth dolls. Frieda was inconsolable, but his mother had no patience for her tears. "You're alive. Go to confession and get rid of your sin of ingratitude," she said.

  She didn't truck weakness, his mother, and she didn't truck meanness. In the middle of the Depression, there was no work in Durango. His father had gotten work up north at the Idarado silver mine, which was open off and on in those years. During the summer, when school was out, the family moved up to be with him. Ryland loved it there. No chores. They lived in a tent and he fished the Uncompahgre. But being seasonal, he was an outsider. A group of year-round boys ruled the camp.

  Early on, though, Ryland found a way to get their attention. There was always a woman at the river beating the filth out of the miners' clothes. Ryland had discovered blasting caps in the pockets of his father's dirty clothes, and he figured there might be caps in the pile of clothes by the river. So one day he threw some lit matches on what turned out to be a highly flammable pile, and the clothes exploded, pow, pow, pow, making him an instant celebrity among the camp boys. But Ryland's mother had been so ashamed of him. The woman's husband had died in the mine that spring, and the pennies she made washing clothes supported her and her son. Ryland felt rotten, then, both that he had increased the woman's pain and that he'd been reckless with his father's pay, because his mother gave that week's wages to the woman to cover the loss.

  His mother insisted that he apologize to the woman and her boy, which he readily did. They lived in a boxcar on the edge of the camp. The boy was a thin-shouldered towhead with pretty, girlish features. That was the first time Ryland saw Sam Behan.

  When Ryland began stammering about how sorry he was, Sam shot him a contemptuous smile, as if to say, If you're going to do something that swell, don't apologize. He jumped down from the boxcar and walked away without a backward glance. Ryland instantly hated him.

  They might never have become friends had Ryland not accidentally found a way to even the score. The boys loved to sneak into the full ore carts and ride them down the mountain. One day Ryland found himself in the same cart with Sam, Sam on one end, he on the other. After a few minutes Ryland saw that they weren't alone. It was so well disguised, the body there in the corner of the cart, right next to Sam. A copper-colored corpse, same color as the ore. When somebody died on the job, it was the miners' custom to send the body down on the carts. Ryland figured Sam's father had probably gone down that way. But it turned out that this man wasn't dead, just asleep.

  Sam rode along, as cool as water, his hair a fractured halo flying from his face, watching the scenery as if he were alone in the cart. Ryland waited until they were almost down before he said, "Hey, kid, you got company." And he watched that blond boy jump, then blush.

  After that Sam didn't turn his back on Ryland anymore. They started palling around. Sam knew every cave on Red Mountain, and he knew where the fish ran, and he had schemes for getting liquor and cigarettes.

  When Sam was fourteen, his mother died—a complication from pregnancy. The baby was stillborn, and nobody came forward as the father. Ryland's mother got word that Sam would become a ward of the state. She insisted that he come and live with them, and he did, for three and a half years. When Ryland and Sam turned eighteen, they enlisted, and by the time Ryland's tour was over, his mother was dead from pneumonia. He hates that—that he went away to war and never saw her again.

  Ryland is listening to the whop of bugs smashing the streetlight at the alley's edge—solid-backed green torpedo bugs, moths the size of golf balls. He puts his left hand on his oxygen tank, his right on the boulder, and pushes once, then again. He stands, shaking and heaving, his night vision blocked by the dots that swarm before his eyes, and he remembers what he wanted to tell the troops, the skeleton crew, that the real dangers of the jungle are not the timid beasts but the tiny flies that get in your eyes, the parasites that carry germs.

  He grasps the handle on his oxygen tank. His hands and feet are ice. He walks along the fence to the sidewalk. He steps onto it and wishes it would move. It doesn't, so he does. His heart is pounding in his ears. This is a good thing, he tells himself. He can't hear his old feet shuffling.

  To keep his mind off his feet, he takes inventory of everything the army told him he needed to survive in combat. Gun and ammunition. Compass. How are you going to know where you are without your compass, soldier?

  He has a tickle in his throat. He doesn't want to cough.

  Big five-celled waterproof flashlight.

  Pocketknife.

  Pinchot-Lerner lightweight emergency fishing kit.

  Presents for the natives: glass, mirror, tobacco, salt. The natives are friendly. Remember how the natives helped the troops in the Solomons, New Guinea, the Philippines. The natives will help you if you gain their confidence with a smile.

  Something squishes under his foot, something wet. He jerks upright and lets go of his tank, which rolls, pulling the tube from his nose down to his neck. He lifts the foot, twists to catch the tank, and feels a little ping in his back, a spitball of pain. He grabs wildly at a tangle of bushes to his left, clenching dry, stickery twigs, and
the cough catches him, hurling him into the bush, hacking and hacking.

  When he straightens up, the spitball in his back balloons, spreading from left to right kidney, then bolting upward, a lightning pain that makes him inhale but won't let him exhale. He leans his whole body into the bush, dry-heaving, trying to catch his breath, and smells shit, which is what he stepped in—dog shit. He strains to breathe and closes his eyes against headlights bearing down from the street. The car passes. He breathes, though not deeply. Hurts too much.

  An engine revs behind him. He turns his head and sees that the car has stopped and the backup lights have come on. He presses further into the bushes, and his heart begins to thud. He fumbles with the oxygen tube at his throat, finds the breather, pushes it back into his nose.

  "Hey, mister"—windows down, front and back, kids, a car full of them, thick Spanish accent—"you all right?"

  "I'm okay," he whispers. He can smell liquor from the car and poop under foot. Dear God. A door opens, the back door, and a boy gets out—big boy. Young man. Big-bellied, baggy pants.

  "You want a ride, viejo?" he says. Breath like gasoline. "Where you live?" He touches Ryland on the arm, then lets go. "You smell like— eeooo! He stepped in caca." He starts to back away, but a girl in the car says, "Let's give him a ride."

  "If he takes his shoes off," the driver says. "Berto, tell him to take his shoes off. Don't want no caca in my car."

  "I'm okay," Ryland whispers.

  Berto sticks his face close to Ryland's. Ryland can see his eyes now, clouded with drink but laughing, and it's difficult to hear. His ears are roaring. "Where you live, old man?" Berto takes his arm and pulls him from the bushes.

  "Make him take his shoes off," the driver yells, and for an instant the car opens up to Ryland like the ground over Palau had. For an instant, what he wants is the dark cushiony depth of the kids' car, just like he'd wanted—he can remember this—the impact of metal and earth while flying low over Palau one time. Just let this boy take him home, or wherever. But he says, "I'm okay. I live right up here."

  "Get his money," somebody in the back seat says, and there's laughter from the others in the car. Ryland's shoulders flare.

  He straightens, reaches into his back pocket, yanks his wallet out, and says, "Here. You want my money? Take it." He shoves it toward this fat boy, into his chest.

  "Whoa," Berto says. He steps back, raises his hands. Ryland lunges forward, waving the wallet in his face.

  "You all want my money?" he hears himself yell.

  Berto lowers his hands. They stare at each other.

  Then Berto's upper lip curls, his lower protruding. He spits on the ground by Ryland's foot. He says, "We don't want your money, old man."

  "Get his money," somebody sings from the back seat, but Berto turns around. "Fuck him," he says. He gets back into the car, closes the door, stares straight ahead. After a few seconds, they peel out. Ryland watches the car fishtail down the street until it disappears and he can't hear the engine anymore.

  Heart racing, he looks up the way toward the house. He is only two blocks away. He can see headlights glide by on Cactus Drive. His eyes have clouded, black dots congealing in the corners, tunneling his vision the way they do when he's almost out of oxygen, though there's plenty of air in his tank. He tries to pull breath from his belly. He feels as though he has split in two, the upper half empty, the lower half ripped open—a searing back pain.

  He begins to walk. The globbing insects in his eyes spill over and run down his cheeks. With the back of his sleeve, he wipes the little buggers away. We don't want your money old man. He wants to smash him, that fat Berto.

  He crosses Cactus, walks tear-blinded up the path to his porch. The smell from his feet makes him want to vomit. He tries to scrape his shoes on the stoop, but the stink doesn't want to come off, so he takes hold of the railing, toes the shoes off, still tied, and leaves them tucked under the porch.

  14

  ROSY IS SHAKING HIM, saying Maggie's here and they're going for a walk by the river. He blinks at the clock. 9:00. He listens to them leave. Sleep is pulling him back, but he resists it. The house is empty now. It's always best if he can do his waking up, his noisy lung clearing, when he is alone, nobody listening.

  By the time they get back, he is washed, dressed, and sitting at the kitchen table sipping a can of Ensure. Rosy cooks breakfast. She brings over a plate of bacon, the grease saturating a paper towel on the plate, and sets it in the middle of the table. "How many eggs?" she says.

  Maggie says she wants two, sunny side up. "Don't break the yolks."

  "Yes, ma'am," Rosy says. She picks up a piece of bacon and puts it on Ryland's plate. "At least try one," she says.

  Maggie tells them there are thirty-six padded folding chairs at the Knights of Columbus Hall, where the wedding reception will be. And sixty-five nonpadded chairs.

  "That," Rosy says, "is a problem. Where are we going to get more chairs? The guest list," Rosy tells Ryland, "is completely out of control."

  He thinks of Xanax. It's only ten o'clock. He promised himself not to have one today. Must ration. He's down to three, and they can't renew the prescription until next Wednesday. But it feels like it's going to be a long day. His back is out, and his throat feels like it's been lacerated. He told Rosy he slept wrong, and that's why he's walking crooked. She found him some Demerol. He took that the last time his back went out, something like four months ago, and apparently Rosy, thinking ahead, went ahead and got a refill even after the pain went away. For a rainy day, she said.

  Raining in his throat today. He feels as if his body is sectioned out in acres. The acre on top is all right. No headache. There's a storm in the acre of his throat. Throat, lungs, lips, chin. They're all connected, and below that some sort of flood might be stirring the regurgitated bird food. His lower back is quicksand, the regular everyday pain of his kidneys jiggling back and forth sharpened by last night's calisthenics, and below the kidneys he's cotton. Cotton fields. A damned cotton-pecker is what he is. No trouble in the light-as-air acre below his kidneys and above his knees.

  Ryland pushes his chair back, takes hold of the handle on his tank, and pushes himself up.

  "Honey?" Rosy says.

  "Just getting the newspaper," he says. He feels her eyes on his back as he wheels the cart toward the front door. Before he gets there, Rosy starts in about the senior citizens. How can they make sure the older people get the padded chairs?

  "Children will scoot into those chairs," she says. A lot of her friends will be at the reception, and they need the padded chairs. She wonders if the padded ones could be designated "senior only," and how can she do that? Ribbons on the backs?

  He opens the front door, then the screen. He stands on the porch, feeling the heat through his slippers. Heat shimmers above the pavement on the other side of the hedge, and his eyes are telescopes. No peripheral vision, doctor. It's a good thing he's not going to take his driver's test today. He can't see anything but what's in front of him.

  He unhooks the tube from his nose, pulls the loop over his head, and leaves his cart on the porch. Dry grass crackles under his slippered feet. He stoops to pick up the paper in the middle of the lawn and stares at the headline. The Scorpions won, 48-10. There's a picture of a big farm boy with charcoal smiles under his eyes. Big, thick-faced, bacon-fed farm boy with a winning smile, who smashed his way to victory in a preseason scrimmage on the local football field last night.

  He walks back to the porch. Without his glasses, all he can see of the front page is the football player, the headline, and the score. He sits down on the porch swing anyway, hooks himself back up to his oxygen, begins flipping through the paper, reading the pictures, just like Teri.

  He presses back into the swing, rocking himself a little. The plywood children stare solemnly at each other. They never smile, those two.

  "Honey," Rosy says. She's standing at the door, looking through the screen. She tells him that she and Maggie have to
run down to the reception hall real quick and will be back soon. He nods and looks down at the paper.

  "Did you get enough to eat?"

  "Yup."

  "Just in case, I'm leaving the bacon. If you don't eat it today, you'll get it tonight in salad."

  "Is that a threat?"

  "Yes, it is." She stands staring at him through the screen so he'll know she means it, then she disappears. But in a few seconds she's back. "Lily might call. Please answer the phone if it rings. Will you?"

  "Yup."

  "Ask her where she'll be later this morning, and I'll call her. Or when I should call her, ask her that. I really need to talk with her." And then she's gone. He listens to the slamming of car doors.

  Lily. Lily doesn't like to hear his voice on the phone any more than he likes to hear hers.

  Heat from the sun seeps into his neck, an agreeable burn. He swings gently, letting his slipper soles scratch the porch. Down the block, the little cemetery dog is in a huff. Lady Finger's been barking all morning. Irritating.

  If he took a Xanax, this day might be tolerable. He could, of course, take a half. Six halves, six days. But half doesn't do the trick. It was Rosy's idea that he take only a half—a child's dose. A whole will put him to sleep. He can still count on that.

  Neck is turning to jelly in the sun. He is a useless fish. If he's going to die—well, it might not be so bad. If he were dead he wouldn't have to answer the phone, which is ringing. The ringing, and then Lily's voice on the answering machine sneaks past the open door and through the screen: Lily's sweeter-than-sugar, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly, do-I-have-the-right-number-sorry-for-the-bother voice wants to know if Rosy is screening her calls.

  "She'll call you back," Ryland says. There. He did just as he was told.

  Lily doesn't like him because she thinks Ryland could have saved her marriage. She had come to him in a rage the night she found out about Alice Atcitty, demanding to know when Ryland knew, accusing him of knowing for years and keeping it secret from her. Which is pretty much the case. With Sam there were always other women. Ryland figured they were Sam's business, not his, and anyway, he'd known Sam for years before Lily was in the picture. Why would he break Sam's confidence?