Good God I wish I had more photographs of my wife.
Why did I find it necessary to chide her when she bought expensive dresses from catalogs, had them delivered, put them on, then sent them back for a refund, only so she could say, “I’ve worn Marc Jacob, Valentino, and Sue Wong”?
Why didn’t I say, “Fuck you,” and click my camera in her direction even though she made such demands against it? Why, over these years, did I not show up at Didi’s job and snap some seemingly inconsequential and inconspicuous photographs of her, face close to a miter box, checking forty-five-degree angles?
“She had a massive heart attack,” a man told me at the hospital. I had requested an autopsy in order to make sure — call me selfish — she hadn’t taken an overdose of pills, finally tired of our long silences.
“Women have heart disease and heart attacks more than people think,” someone else told me, a man who taught Biology 50 to students who needed to be able to identify arms from legs on their remedial tests at the community college. “Dead men on the golf course get all the headlines, but women have just as many heart attacks, if not more. They call it ‘the silent killer.’ Wait. That might be wrong. The brown recluse might be the silent killer. Or coral snake. Now that I think about it, just about everything’s a silent killer.”
This monologue took place at Didi’s visitation inside Glymph Funeral Home. I didn’t know what to say, shook the biology professor’s hand, and tried to remember his name. I thought, are you making fun of me? I thought, I’m about to be your silent killer. I thought, if only I’d made the decision to cut off that water on the first day.
I could’ve walked back home and said, “Hey, pour some food dye down the hole and let me run back over to the graveyard to see if it comes out.” I could’ve said, “Food dye would get diluted beyond recognition. Let’s put a marble down that hole and see if it comes out in the cemetery.” I could’ve said, “You remember that time we got in a fight, Didi, a day before we flew to New York for a vacation? I have a confession to make. When I went to the e-ticket kiosk, I requested that my seat be changed so we wouldn’t have to sit next to each other all that time.” I could’ve said, “I wonder if we can send a piece of kite string down the hole, then knot both ends to empty lima bean cans and talk to one another, you know, like people did back before everything got so goddamned complicated.”
Luckily there were available plots at the Calloustown Natural Baptist Church’s graveyard. Didi would’ve never agreed to such an eternal resting place. I bought the plot right next to hers, too, even though I had no love of Christians in general and Baptists in particular. Fuck it, I thought. Would I be able to see anything in the so-called afterlife? Does anything matter? If, by chance, things turned out differently than I believed, couldn’t Didi and I take the mysterious tunnel back home nightly?
Oh Didi, Didi, Didi — how I wish you never roamed the earth out back. How I wish I’d’ve either shot you more, or never.
Muddling
A guy on the local news said most gas stations lowered their prices at nine in the morning and raised them at four, something about fucking over people who’d already driven to work and then again for drivers who didn’t leave their cubicles until dusk. He didn’t exactly use those words, but any rational cynic knew what he meant. I don’t think the guy was an economist or soothsayer, but he evidently worked honestly at something in between or no one would’ve interviewed him on Channel 4. I didn’t catch his name or occupation, but he wore a blue shirt and striped tie. He combed his hair. The guy seemed to know more about oil corporations than the rest of my friends, relatives, or instrument-needy prospective customers.
So on Friday morning I drove from where I live on the outskirts of Calloustown and began circling a block that held a Citgo, a Sunoco, an Exxon, and a locally owned Rajer Dodger’s that had two self-serve pumps out front. I circled and circled, starting about 8:30. Each establishment sold regular unleaded for $3.65 a gallon, plus that 9/10ths — twenty cents less than the national average, but like my friends, relatives, and instrument-needy prospective customers always say, “So what? It’s still fucking Calloustown.” Though, again, not in those exact words.
Three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five. I rounded the block — this is the Columbia Road, over onto Old Calloustown Road, onto the Charleston Road, onto Old Old Calloustown Road. What I’m saying is, I circled the heart of town where supply and demand mattered. In between I noticed six or eight church signs, the funeral home, Southern Exotic Pets, Worm’s Bar, and so on. Worm had a new piece of plywood leaned next to his door that advertised TOPLESS, which meant he’d be in there behind the bar not wearing a shirt. He’d done it before, during lean times, like the last time gasoline prices reached $3.65 and people rarely left their houses. One of the churches had a magnetic letter sign out front that read SIN COOKS FRY LATER, which took me about sixteen right-hand turns to figure out, what with “cooks” being both a verb and noun, and wondering if someone forgot a comma. At least the preacher or signage person wasn’t asking me to go to the library forty miles away, find a Bible, and look up what’s spelled out in a particular chapter and verse.
At nine o’clock, just as I was about to run out of gas, sure enough, assistant managers started coming out of the four stations and/or convenience stores. They took their poles and exchanged a 5 for a 3, bringing the price per gallon down to $3.63 plus that 9/10ths. Maybe I said aloud, “They need to hire that dude on a permanent basis on the TV, the guy who figured out this raise-and-lower-prices ruse. Fuck the weatherman, who’s never close to being right.”
I circled around two more times, then pulled into Rajer Dodger’s only because I liked to hear the Indian guy in there yell things to his wife in whatever dialect they employed. It didn’t matter to me much that they offered gas that came from one of the major oil companies, or that they charged an extra dime per gallon if you used a credit card, just like every other station on the block.
I pulled up to the pump. I got out and unscrewed the cap. I read PLEASE MUST PAY FIRST PLEASE on a handwritten sign taped to the pump’s torso, and although I wanted to say, “Oh fuck me give me a break, what kind of gas station doesn’t have one of those fancy credit/debit acceptors plus a place to slide in cash a la any of the video poker machines up at Harrah’s Casino up in Cherokee?” I locked the door to my pickup and started inside.
This is when I noticed a white man, of the normal indeterminate age of these parts — which means between fifty and eighty — sitting in front of a fifty-five-gallon plastic barrel, his legs splayed out with ten or twelve pints of blackberries in between. He said, “You need you some berries, Chief. Keep away the cancer. Eat them on ice cream or whole under milk. Or by they selves. Keep away the cancer. You don’t want the cancer for you and yours, right?”
Remember that I said “dusk” earlier — about people leaving work — which means I’m talking winter. Blackberries emerge in July. No one has local fresh blackberries in November. They have spinach — which fights cancer, too, according to spinach farmers — but not blackberries. Hell, I’ve been around long enough to hear how everything fights cancer — radishes, peaches, cord wood, getting your driveway sealed.