Acre Under a Green Sky

Chuck Luka was arrested that morning and taken to jail. I knew the Waterstop Police Station well, and of course I knew that there were two cells in back, but I was never allowed to see them. I always imagined they were like the cells you see in Westerns.

"Kids are portable," my father use to say, so when my mother said she couldn't "abide" us after all that had happened that morning –– that she was about to scream, my father packed Danny and me in the back seat and drove off. Being portable, we kids were papoosed into every facet of our parents' lives, and we weren't the only ones. The doctor made house calls with his kids. The shoe maker had a playpen in his shop, and the plumber always had at least two of his kids waiting outside in the truck. So no one would be surprised to see my father pulling up to the Police Station with two kids in the back seat. My brother and I were told to wait in the car, but the invisible cord that attaches children to parents pulled me into the police station after my father; and likewise the invisible cord that attaches younger brothers to older brothers pulled Danny in after me.

Here's a curious thing about the police station: it was converted from an old auto showroom. The place was a veritable fishbowl on the corner of Main and Chestnut with two vast windows in front and another one facing the side street.

By the time I got the big glass door open for Danny and me, my father was already talking to George The Dispatcher.

"What do you mean, 'he's gone'?" my father was saying.

"I mean, the man isn't here –– in this place –– on these premises, that's what I mean!"

George The Dispatcher was standing behind a counter and appeared to be a head taller than my father, but the truth was he was standing on a platform back there and wasn't much taller than I was at the time. Ugly garish taboos on both arms disappeared under his rolled up sleeves and may have gone on to cover his whole body for all I know. He had a charming Scottish burr and was easily riled when anyone suggested he was Irish; which, of course, the other men did at every opportunity.

"Look, George, I haven't got time to play games with you," my father said, "Now, where the fuck is Mr. Luka?"

George The Dispatcher's baby face turned bright red and his cheeks trembled. He clenched both fists against the countertop and took a moment to collect himself before trying to respond.

"And by whose authority . . . "

My father had no patience for George's petty condescension. He called out, "Chuck! Chuck Luka!" Then he walked around the counter and through a swinging gate labeled, "Police Personnel Only", and into the vast expanse of partitioned cubicles and waiting areas; all the while calling out Luka's name as loud as he could.

"He's in the hospital," George shouted after my father.

"What?"

"He had some kind of fit or something, so I had my men take him to the hospital."

"What kind of fit?"

"I think his heart stopped for a minute, I don't know. My men took him to the hospital."

I should mention here that George The Dispatcher was not even a police officer much less anyone's boss. He had a uniform made for himself and fashioned a dispatcher's badge so that he looked like a policeman, but he was a civilian employee –– no more than a glorified clerk assigned to answer phones and to pass on messages either by phone or car radio. Still, he had me fooled. I assumed by his attitude that he was Commissioner of Police or something, and I liked him tremendously, as did just about everyone else. He was a pretentious little man who needed desperately to be important, and I think it was an act of love and the height of generosity that no one ever burst his bubble.

My father was shouting loud enough for everyone to hear that Luka better not have any bruises on or about his person. Something like that. Something like a joke that's really a threat. Then, he grabbed our hands and pulled us out the door. I swear he threw us into the back seat of the car; he was that mad. Scared and mad. I wish he drove all the time like he drove to the hospital that day. I really liked him scared and mad.

This time, he made me promise to stay inside the car. I was so mad I punched Danny. My father hit me across the back of my head, and said, "Cut it out!" I was in a rage as I watched him begin the long walk across that gray desert of a parking lot to the hospital entrance. I had no idea the Visitor's Parking Lot was so far from the hospital, but then I had always been rushed into the hospital by way of the Emergency Entrance. It's much quicker. You just hop out of the car and into an arm cast or onto the operating table to have your tonsils yanked out.

What does a boy do stuck waiting in a car all alone with his little brother? He makes him cry, of course.

"He's not coming back, you know."

"Yes he is."

"Nope. We'll never see him again."

"He'll be right back. He said."

"Dad's real sick. Why do you think we came to the hospital so fast?"

"Dad is not sick!"

It's working. His lower lip is trembling and curled. His voice is shaky and his eyes are mad.

Danny is just eighteen months younger than me, and too good for words. I don't know why I torment him.

"Yeah, he's dying all right."

"He is not!"

Danny hits me.

"Yes, he is!"

I hit him back.

Now he attacks me with both fists flying, and I feel an eruption of joy as we wrestle like two wet cats in a barbed cage. God, I love my brother.

I swear I didn't plan it, but it couldn't have worked out better if I had. Danny jumped out of the car and started running toward my father. I gave him a little head start, then started after him. Danny was crying out, "Daddy! Daddy!"; and sure enough, when my father turned back, it appeared that I was trying to stop Danny. Danny was already in my father's arms when I reached them.

"Will you guys give me a break here!" my father said.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the hospital entrance. "You're not fooling anyone, my little friend. And mark my words, one of these days Danny is going to kick the shit out of you. I just pray to God I'm there to see it."

My father sat us down in the waiting room just inside the hospital entrance. Then he stood over us and said, " I swear to you, the first butt off that couch gets a beating. I'm talking pink ass here. Do you hear me? Now, I mean it!"

"How come it's just me you're looking at?!" I said.

"Don't push me," he said, "You don't want to push me right now. Just stay put!"

I watched him walk over to the admissions desk and talk to the nurse. Then he hurried down the hall and out of sight. I jumped to my feet, and Danny grabbed my shirt.

"You're gonna get it!" he said.

"I want to see Luka," I said, pulling my shirt out of his grasp. I ducked past the admissions desk easily. Now I could see my father moving far ahead of me down the endless corridor. Everything was going great until a nurse stopped me.

"Hold on there. Are you twelve or older?"

"I had my tonsils out here. That's my father," I said, pointing to my father's back as he disappeared around a corner.

"Who's your doctor?"

"Doctor Mace. I got to hurry."

I was skipping backward away from her so that she had to raise her voice to be heard.

"Is this a follow-up visit then?"

"Yes," I shouted back before breaking into a run down the hall and around the corner. And there was my father a short distance down the hall stepping into the elevator. The elevator door closed before I reached it, but I was able to read the floor indicator on top. It went to the third floor.

When I reached the third floor, I ran out of the elevator and smack into my father and Doctor Mace standing by the nurses station.

"Hey, you're not supposed to be up here," Doctor Mace said with a smile.

"I want to see Luka," I said, more to my father than to Doctor Mace. My father apologized to the doctor with a shrug.

Doctor Mace put his hand on my shoulder and led me a short distance over to a chair against the wall by the elevators.

"I don't think that's such a good idea right now. Why don't you just wait for your father here. He won't be long."

Dr. Mace was the only grown-up I knew who actually smelled good. He joined my father again and they spoke in hushed tones.

Chuck Luka was dying, Doctor Mace said. His pancreas and liver were bad. He was having seizures. He was mute from shock; physical and mental. Both his body and his mind had been struck dumb by whatever happened in that house. Dr. Mace gave Luka forty-eight hours to survive or die. It was up to Luka, he said; and then he walked away leaving my father stuck there on the tile floor with a funny look on his face like he couldn't breathe.

After a time, my father shook off the feeling and moved on down the hall and entered Luka's room on tiptoe like a thief. I waited for the door to close and then followed him through the door. I was greeted by three men in bare-assed hospital gowns playing poker around one of the four beds in the room. My father was peering behind a curtain in the corner of the room.

The man with the red hair said, "You're not supposed to be here."

"I had my tonsils out here," I said.

"My kids can't visit. Where do you come off marching in here breaking the rules? "

He was actually directing his comments to my father, but it was useless. My father hadn't budged; hadn't even acknowledged my presence in the room until I stepped up beside him. Without even looking at me, he put his hand around my shoulder and opened the curtain a little more so I could see.

Chuck Luka was never a good-looking man; but life, animation bestowed a kind of beauty on him. He had mischievous eyes deep set under wildly erratic black bushy brows which he seemed to cultivate rather than control. They were like wire. His teeth were crooked and stained from years of Camels, but his smile was so lovely, so endearing, so embracing that you didn't care. And his laugh made you laugh. It was a raucous, dirty joke kind of laugh that touched your funny bone, and you laughed with him no matter what was going on. His voice was deep and raspy. You could scratch an itch with his voice. Something about it made you listen to every word he said. He told the greatest stories, and those eyes of his always let you know when he was pulling your leg. No one was ever embarrassed around Luka. Every joke was on him, and everyone of them was funny as hell. But most importantly, there was something about the way he worked that misshapen conglomeration of outsized features he called a face that made you feel that you and he shared a very private joke; a very secret important joke about life. With just a wink, you were okay by him; that somehow he knew you and all you had ever done or thought or felt, and you were still okay by him –– that maybe what you take so seriously about yourself is just a private joke after all.

But what my father and I found lying there on a white hospital bed was a yellow, bloated corpse of a man asleep with tubes up his swollen, pockmarked nose. His cheeks were purple with veins afire. His face in repose was a battlefield from which no one survived. Chuck Luka's life force had blinded everyone to the damage he had done himself through the years. My father called out his name, "Chuck". He reached for Luka's hand, but tubes were sprouting from there, too. He touched his shoulder and called out again, "Chuck".

Then Luka opened his eyes and looked at my father.

I stepped forward, and said, "Hey Luka."

"He can't hear you," my father said, "Look at him."

Luka's eyes were the eyes of a dead man. There was no one there. I wanted to run out of the room; but instead I said, "Come on, Luka, wake up. It's me."

Those eyes closed again never having heard. My father pulled me back and made some gesture with the sheet like tucking Luka in; then closing the curtain behind us, we confronted the poker game still in progress.

This time a different man said something. His arm was in a full cast and was frozen in a ridiculous half-salute position made all the more silly by the splay of cards he held in that hand. My father waved him away. He was in no mood to argue. But the man was insistent.

"Hey. I think your friend's calling you."

It was Luka calling my father's name; calling, "Josh".

We rushed to his side. The eyes of a dead man now showed some slight sign of life. An effort. A question. Something. Luka took hold of my father's wrist and held it. I looked down at Luka's ham hock of a hand; scarred and beaten from years of labor with tools that too often missed the mark. The back of his hand was horribly discolored from repeated efforts to insert the needle taped there for some monitoring device. On the underside of Luka's wrist were two small scratches.

My father could never tell me exactly what Luka did for a living. Something to do with building. "Luka was the best damn finish man in town," someone had told him, "once you got him on the job." My father had no idea what that meant. I looked into Luka's begging eyes again, then back to my father and said, "What does he want?"

"I don't know. Probably wants a bed pan."

Instead Luka said, "Did they get him? Did they get the guy who did it?"

My father pulled his wrist out of Luka's grasp, and stepped back from the bed.

"Do they know why?" Luka said, "Why? Why? . . . "

The word echoed in my brain as Luka drifted off to sleep or unconsciousness taking the word with him: "Why?"

We left Luka's room in silence and didn't say another word until we found ourselves alone in the elevator.

"He didn't know me," I said.

"No."

"Is Luka gonna be okay now?" I said.

"He's in a lot of trouble."

"Are you going to help him?"

"Yes. I am."

I think he made up his mind in that moment. For me, it was a done deal. He would fix everything. But for my father, it was a declaration of war.