Death in Texas

“I always wanted to go back to Texas,” Dick told his wife. “That’s where I was raised and that’s where I plan to die. I always had that in mind.” His wife was in her mid-thirties and expecting. “Dick, you’ve got a young family and I don’t care if the doctor told you that you’ve got only 5 months to live. We just can’t drop everything and go to Texas.’ Dick looked intently at the yard from the deck they were sitting on. “Well, I guess I’ll go by myself and you can come towards the end when I get real bad.” 

Dick went into their bedroom and started packing. The bedroom was small and Dick’s portion of it was cluttered by many things. His dresser was full of knick-knacks, mostly all things he’d had in his pockets during the day. Among the collection, there was some fishing tackle, a lot of coins, a rosary his mother had given him when she’d found out about his diagnosis and a pack of mostly finished cigarettes. Of course, there were also a lot of papers from the hospital and brochures about his condition.  Dick threw away the brochures and the papers and felt a little freer for doing so, he stuffed the cigarettes into his pocket, picked up the rosary and thought about it before deciding to stuff it next to the cigarettes. He told himself he’d clean the rest up later. 

He went out to the porch, lit a cigarette, and smoked it while thinking of nothing at all. His wife came out to talk to him. She was more soothing this time, “Dick, don’t do this, don’t move away. Don’t you know this is hard for me, too? I’ve got a baby coming in 7 months. Maybe you’ll live long enough to see your first child.” “Doctor said I’d be lucky to make it five months. I’ll be dead by then and you know it. Why not come with me and stay with my folks in Texas?” 

But she wouldn’t say yes to this offer. In fact, she had a lot of friends and was enjoying her job. She didn’t want to take her maternity leave early. So, the rest of Dick’s week was spent packing a few belongings into his truck. By Saturday, he was saying his goodbyes. “Sarah, you’ll call me if you have any problems, won’t you?” he said. He was worried about his wife but his wife was the daughter of the governor of Tennessee so he figured if any pregnant woman was going to be well-looked after it would be her. 

As he drove on the Freeway, he remembered the first time he’d come to Tennessee 10 years ago and the signs he’d passed which he was now passing in the other direction. He’d come thinking he’d never go back home except to die and now decades earlier than expected he was doing just that. Just before exiting the state, he stopped at a pit stop for gas. He was hungry and it was also lunchtime so he went inside to the Arby’s. He ordered a sandwich to go and went back to eat it in his truck in the parking lot. He enjoyed sitting in his truck. If he had to admit, it was the one thing he was the sorriest to lose. 

A family parked next to him and a young boy got out of the minivan with his sister. They were both blonde and freckled. The boy was holding a paper airplane. No doubt he’d made it in the car. He proceeded to throw the airplane at a trash can nearby; it missed and went into the lane of traffic. He started to run towards it but his mother who had just gotten out of the car shrieked and grabbed his arm. Just then, a car drove over the paper plane and crushed it. The boy began to cry. He was angry and sick of driving, it seemed. His mother and father scolded him and his mother took his wrist and pulled him into the pit stop. Meanwhile, his sister was jumping up and down and saying she needed to use the bathroom. 

After they left, Dick got out of his car and threw away the trash from his lunch. Then he had another cigarette in his car and sipped on a Mountain Dew soda--he would need the energy and he was in no rush. In fact, he was just leaving when he saw the family come out. The kids now had sodas and straws. Dick wondered how far they’d get on the road without needing to stop for the bathroom again. That reminded him to go back in and use the bathroom again before he started out on the road again. 

There was a line to use the bathroom. Several families were in the line, most of them were not white. There was an Indian family with a young boy and a girl who seemed to be about the same age. The mother was waiting in line with the girl and the father with the boy. The father had an anxious expression on his bald face and he was speaking to the boy in a language that Dick didn’t understand. Since Dick ended up in line almost directly behind the son and father, they basically walked in together. The line continued into the bathroom. Though Dick wasn’t in a hurry, something about the line made him start jingling his keys in his pocket. Finally, the three of them were walking to the stalls. The Indian boy ran in front of Dick and blocked the stall he was going to do, but before he could unzip his pants, his father was yanking him by the elbow and scolding him harshly in another language. 

That night he spent alone in a motel 7. He texted his wife that everything was okay and she said she was spending the evening having dinner with a friend from work and her husband. Dick decided not to call that night. He couldn’t fall asleep, so he switched on the television and caught a little bit of a boxing match. It was the kind of thing his wife would have switched off immediately if she had been with him, but he enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the room was non-smoking but he sipped on a little bourbon he had with him. Soon, he found himself fading off to sleep. Then, he was sleeping like a baby. 

One thing did happen. Dick got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Since this rarely happened to him, he remembered it the next day. It was probably the Mountain Dew he’d bought earlier in the day.  He also remembered the big, brown recluse spider he saw in the bathtub as he was peeing. It was dark and hairy and just sitting there. Dick was barefoot, but he went out of the room to get a boot to smash the spider. The spider smashed pretty badly. However, he left the mess for the morning and went back to a dreamless, deep sleep. The next morning he woke up at dawn without the aid of an alarm. He walked into the bathroom to pee and use the shower and saw the mess again. He stared at it while peeing and brushing his teeth--he never brushed in the shower. Then, he tore off a wad of toilet paper, picked up the smashed spider with it, and threw the whole thing in the toilet. The spider’s legs came out as the whole thing flushed down the toilet. 

 After a cold shower--must have been something wrong with the pipes, he handed in the keys and hit the road early. He drove for several hours before stopping to fill up and buy another Mountain Dew. He was feeling sleepy. 

He also called his wife. “Hi dear, how’s the driving,” she said when she answered the phone without leaving him any room edgewise. If Dick was annoyed or thrown off by the energy of his wife so different from his own, he didn’t show it in his voice.  “It’s alright,” he said “I’ve got about four hours before I reach my mom’s. I reckon I’ll just keep driving.” “Alright, honey, did you sleep ok last night?  be careful. Don’t fall asleep over the wheel.” “I’m good. I just had a Mountain Dew. But how are you doing?” “Me. I’m doing fine. But listen, honey, I’ve got a meeting now. Let’s catch up later.”  Dick reaffirmed this point:  “Now, listen we’ll be in touch, and I promise you I will drive back as soon as you tell me too” Dick said. His wife seemed to barely hear him. “Love you,” she said and hung up as he was saying “Love you, too.” 

Dick turned on the radio and listened to some country music. The song that came on was ironically about Texas. 

 

Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone

Everything that I've got, is just what I've got on

When that sun is high in that Texas sky

I'll be bucking at the county fair

Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I'll be there

Dick sang along to the song because he knew it so well. “They took my saddle in Houston, broke my leg in Santa Fe/ Lost my wife and a girlfriend somewhere along” he sang and then, the final lines of the song, “Amarillo by morning, Amarillo's where I'll be.”  The man’s voice was calm but sad. He seemed resolute about the way his life had gone. 

For two hours, Dick just drove. Then, feeling like he could use the bathroom and noticing the gas gauge on his car, he stopped at a gas station to fill up. He also called his mom. His mom, as he’d predicted, was rather hysterical. “Dick, I can’t believe you are doing this drive alone and in your condition? What did your doctors say about it? I can’t believe Sarah isn’t coming with you.” These were some of the remarks she fired at him during the phone call. Dick just grunted to most of them and told her his ETA. 

As he reached only an hour to his mother’s house, he began to recognize all the exits. There was the exit they took once a month to go to the natural foods store. There was the exit that led to the church they’d gone to growing up. All of them were familiar and had a story to tell. It began to rain and thunder lightly. There was another afternoon storm coming to this part of Texas. The windshield wipers went on automatically in his truck. He drove in the rain for the last hour of the trip and listened to country music.

His mother came out to meet him. Normally, she would have been having Saturday lunch with friends but she canceled this to meet him. She was gushing with things to tell him and to ask him. A mutt of a dog also ran out with her. “That’s Samuel,'' she said. The Gunther’s dog had puppies with a stray dog, you know, and I got one of them. I called him Samuel, you know, like the prophet because I feel like I could use a prophet in my life sometimes; it gets so confusing, don’t it?” This and many other things were said.  

Dick walked into the small trailer home and smelled the smell of chicken fried steak, his favorite. “Look, what I done made you. I bet Sarah can’t cook chicken fried steak like mine. No, Tennessee girl can do that. Everyone knows the best chicken fried steak comes from this here part of Texas.” They said grace before the meal and his mother went on for a while “Please God, bless this food and bless Dick heal his body and send him back to his wife and new baby like a new man. God you can work miracles and raise the dead from the grave. Please work this miracle for us.” Dick put his hand over his mothers which were clasped in prayer. “Please, mom, don’t worry about it. I lived a good life.” His mother broke down in tears and ran to her room. Dick had to comfort her.

After that, he sat outside and smoked a cigarette while looking at the long, expansive Texas horizon that hadn’t changed at all in the time he had been gone. His mother broke into his reveries with a “Dick, you’re not really smoking now. You can’t keep that awful habit up especially with your disease.” Dick shrugged, “What do I really have to lose.” His mother conceded that he was an adult and only asked that he not smoke inside the trailer and not after church the next day. 

The next day was church, indeed. Dick wore the suit and tie he had packed especially for this occasion. Though he hadn’t been to church in years, he knew there was no getting out of going. 

The pastor read from Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” After reading the verse, he began his sermon, “I call this verse to your attention because lately in the news and on the TV, we see people without faith. They don’t have much to live for or to die for, but we Christians have faith. We believe that there is more to come.” The sermon went on for a long time but Dick stopped listening and barely made it through without falling asleep. His mother seemed to be lapping in every word. 

After church, the two of them went to a diner and after ordering brunch, his mother started talking about the sermon. “That was a good sermon for you, son. You need to have faith in your life.” He grunted, “I do.” She started again as they waited for the food. “Now listen, I was thinking you ought to ask the pastor to pray over you. I know you’ll laugh but something could happen.” Dick grimaced, but after a lot of cajoling, he said, “Alright, I’ll go. Who knows? Maybe Jesus will cure me after all.”

Back at home, he took a short walk. Storm clouds were rolling in and so he turned back after only walking half a mile and smoking half a cigarette. As he neared the house, he heard music coming from his mother’s trailer. “ Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone / Everything that I've got, is just what I've got on.” THE END