Annie Oakley's Girl by Rebecca Brown

Author:Rebecca Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers

A GOOD MAN

Jim calls me in the afternoon to ask if I can give him a ride to the doctor’s tomorrow because this flu thing he has is hanging on and he’s decided to get something for it. I tell him I’m supposed to be going down to Olympia to help Ange and Jean remodel their spare room and kitchen. He says it’s no big deal, he can take the bus. But then a couple hours later he calls me back and says could I take him now because he really isn’t feeling well. So I get in my car and go over and pick him up.

Jim stands inside the front door to the building. When he opens the door I start. His face is splotched. Sweat glistens in his week-old beard. He leans in the door frame breathing hard. He holds a brown paper grocery bag. The sides of the bag are crumpled down to make a handle. He looks so small, like a school boy being sent away from home.

“I’m not going to spend the night there,” he mumbles, “but I’m bringing some socks and stuff in case.”

He hobbles off the porch, his free hand grabbing the railing. I reach to take the paper bag, but he clutches it tight.

We drive to Swedish hospital and park near the Emergency Room. I lean over to hug him before we get out of the car. He’s wearing four layers — T-shirt, long underwear, sweatshirt, his jacket. But when I touch his back I feel the sweat through all his clothes.

“I put these on just before you came.” He sounds embarrassed.

I put an arm around him to help him inside. When he’s standing at the check-in desk, I see the mark the sweat makes on his jacket.

Jim hands me the paper bag. I take his arm as we walk to the examination room to wait for a doctor. We walk slowly. Jim shuffles and I almost expect him to make his standard crack about the two of us growing old together in the ancient homos home for the prematurely senile, pinching all the candy stripers’ butts, but he doesn’t.

He sits down on the bed in the exam room. After he catches his breath he says, “Nice drapes.”

There aren’t any drapes. The room is sterile and white. Jim leans back in the chair and breathes out hard. The only other sound is the fluorescent light. He coughs.

“Say something, Tonto. Tell me story.”

“ — I . . . uh . . .”

I pick up a packet of tongue depressers. “Hey, look at all these. How many you think they go through in a week?”

He doesn’t answer.

I take an instrument off a tray. “How ’bout this?” I turn to show him but his eyes are closed. I put it back down. When I close my mouth, the room is so quiet.

I can’t tell stories the way Jim can.

A doctor comes in. She introduces herself as Dr. Allen and asks Jim the same questions he’s just answered at the front desk — his fevers, his sweats, his appetite, his breath.

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