Acre Under a Green Sky

Everything ends so quickly. Lives do. And stories do.

It was the worst of February when Dan phoned me.

"Who's dying now?" I said.

"What?"

"You're the goddamned voice of death. I never hear from you unless someone's dying."

"Well, fuck you too. It's Dad. You better hurry."

I got the first available flight out of New York, and Dan was there to meet me at the Pittsburgh Airport. It was already near midnight.

"Where's Ruth?"

"With Dad. You're bunking at our house. Kate made up the sofa for you."

He grabbed my bag out of my hand and rushed ahead of me toward the exit. I tagged along after him nearly running to keep up. As we crossed the parking lot through the piercing snow, I was struck by how much Dan had become my grandfather –– the same bullish walk and build. He had grown a full head taller than me by his eighteenth birthday and now he outweighed me by a good thirty pounds. He carried the weight well.

He threw my bag onto the back seat and got behind the wheel. I let myself in the passenger side. The car was freezing and in short time the windshield was totally masked by our breath. We had to wait for the heater to do its work. I wondered if Dan could avoid talking to me the whole ride to Waterstop. It would be difficult huddled there in that car with all of February thrashing about outside in the dark. At last, he turned the headlights on and then the windshield wipers and we were underway.

I can't say how long we rode without a word. Then Dan said:

"He'll ask you to kill him. Don't do it."

"What?!"

"You'll think about it –– killing him –– but don't."

"Is he in pain?"

"Yes, but not the way you think. He says, 'Every time they bring me back, they bring back less of me,' and he's right. He's been half dead for years. The aneurysm, the heart attacks, the strokes. Fifty years ago, he would have died simply and quickly with the first heart attack. I swear to God, modern medicine can be very cruel. It's a torture."

"My God, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Yes, you did."

"I didn't know it was that bad."

"Let's not argue about it. I have a collection of pills to off myself when my time comes. I suggest you do the same. Or at least think about it. I'll give you the recipe when we get to the house."

"There's a recipe for suicide?"

"Oh yeah."

"You can't be serious."

"Grandpa was in and out of intensive care for fifteen years. Now it's Dad's turn. We Wileys don't die easy. You weren't around to see it. It ain't pretty, believe me."

"I know it's kind of late in the game, but is there anything I can do?"

"We could use some money. If you got any extra money lying around, we could sure use some."

"How much do you need?"

"Don't pull that crap with me. None of us has a pot to piss in and you know it."

"You guys have always been so busy. I always figured you were making good money."

"Are you kidding! Dad's a slut. He's been giving it away for years. We work for garden vegetables and auto parts. If we're lucky we might get the house painted. I send out a bill, and we get free haircuts for a year. Most of the time, we get nothing. If only he had remarried. Had someone to get his mind off work."

"He came close a few times."

"Close doesn't count . . ."

". . .in horse shoes or in love," I finished the old family saw.

"How long's it been?" I said, "Since you were making real money?"

"Ever since Grandpa moved to Fort Lauderdale with his new wife. She got everything. The farm, everything. She even got a quarter interest in the office building. We couldn't sell it if we wanted to."

"Jesus Christ, I had no idea."

"Yes, you did. It's not so bad. It's not like we lost a fortune or anything. He was never the millionaire he pretended to be. She would have done just as well if she had spent those years working in a regular whore house."

"Jesus Dan, what's happened to you?"

"I'm really pissed right now. At you, at her, at him, at everyone. Mostly, I'm pissed at myself. I've been in way over my head for a long time. You were the partner he wanted. This should have been your job. I just stumbled into it by default. Cause I was lazy and . . . cause I thought I could be you."

"He wanted us all there."

"No. All along he wanted you . . . 'partner'!"

"I didn't want it and you did. At least that's how it seemed to me."

"All I ever wanted was a big screen TV."

"At least you got that."

"No, I didn't. I got a wife and two kids. And do you want to know the kicker?! Dad thinks I'm Grandpa."

"What do you mean?"

"His head's all screwed up. He thinks I'm his father. God only knows who you're gonna be."

"He doesn't know you?"

"He hasn't known me for months. Oh, he has his lucid moments, but most of the time he thinks I'm his father. And I get all that resentment dumped on me."

"And you've got no place to dump yours."

"Sure I do. You're here."

"Thank God for that."

"It just goes round and round. But the business stops here. Bob's going to stay in the marines, so Wiley & Wiley stops here with me."

"And Debbie?"

"She'll get married and have babies. It's all she thinks about."

"You'll close the office then?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll get myself that big screen TV after all. And when you see Ruth, please don't say anything about her weight."

"Why should I?"

"The last time you saw her, you said she was fat."

"Did I? That was bad."

"Yeah. You were drunk. See, you're not nearly as good as you think you are."

"Dad always said you'd kick the shit out of me one day."

And with that, Dan started laughing and I was glad, but it turned into a terrible laugh. He was gagging on his laughter. I told him to pull off the road, but he waved me away and forced a recovery on himself. I was hoping he would cry. It looked as though he might. But he was so tightly bound by stress and pain that I think he was afraid that if he started to cry, he might never stop. I said I should take the wheel, but he insisted on driving the rest of the way to town, and nothing more was said.

I looked out at the wind whipped snow falling, and a terrible thought occurred to me. Had I abandoned my brother and sister the way our mother had? Had I totally miscalculated their need for me and my responsibility to them? I simply never thought myself important enough to be needed. Maybe she thought as little of herself as I did. Or maybe we were both self-centered bastards –– too selfish to give anyone else a thought. Dan said I was not nearly as good as I thought I was. That's probably true, but I think he was realizing that I was not nearly as good as he thought I was. That's true, too.