Where the River Bends by Richard Haddaway

Author:Richard Haddaway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2002-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

THE TEXAS & PACIFIC TERMINAL WAS AS BIG AS A CATHEDRAL. THE HIGH windows were stained with dust, diffusing the winter light. Sparrows nested in the ceiling’s lacework of steel beams, cheeping as they blew about in leaflike sweeps.

We straggled across an expanse of marbled floor, huddled behind Granddaddy. He seemed to know where he was going.

Aunt Jew was just behind him in her wheelchair, pushed by Miss Godwin, who was wearing her whitest, softest nurse’s dress and a crisp cap pinned to her graying bun. Aunt Jew was wrapped in a shawl, with a blanket across her lap. She mumbled about wanting a cigarette, and Miss Godwin said, “Not now, honey. Not now.”

It was Sunday, a week before Christmas, the air was brisk and new, and Christmas Card Day was behind us. We had just been to church and were still in our Sunday clothes. It was almost noon.

Laura, John, Endicott, and I surrounded the wheelchair. Mama was behind, holding Arthur by the hand. Odessa and Judge, also in their Sunday best, brought up the rear. Odessa was wearing her biggest, featheriest Sunday hat; it looked like round three of a cockfight. Judge limped along.

We had come to welcome my father home.

• • •

Daddy had stayed through the full two-month course at the Minnesota sanitarium. None of us had seen him, but we’d all written him. We children had gotten just one letter from him, but Mama had gotten more—private ones, plus others from the doctors.

The sanitarium had a buddy system. People who went through treatment were given a partner in their hometown to help them reenter society, somebody who had been through the sanitarium themselves and had been successful in their recovery. Al Heath had been assigned as Daddy’s partner.

Al came to our house three times while Daddy was away. He talked about the kind of treatment Daddy was undergoing and how he’d be when he got out. We liked him, most of us. Granddaddy kept his distance.

Al was a Fort Worth lawyer. He looked to be about my father’s age, with some of the same markings, as if he had been to some of the same dark stretches at the end of the line. He was too-soon gray, and his eyes were half hidden above darkened puffs. Everything about him seemed bunched into knots—the muscles of his face, the words, the handshake.

He tried to explain how Daddy was going to be different—that he would probably be a little quieter at first, shy and uneasy, maybe moody or depressed.

He didn’t know Daddy very well, I thought. That’s the way he already was, on his best days. It was hard for me to believe he was going to be able to come roaring back, better than ever.

Al said Daddy would be going to a lot of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, where people like him got together and helped each other by talking about their problems. He was especially good with the younger children, explaining things with simplicity and care.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.