The Battle of the Selves
My brother was entering his fifth year at the University of Nebraska when I was admitted. The four hundred miles expanse between Lincoln and Alliance was too far to leave our Mother behind in the store. The store, “Corner Grocery”, was not much bigger than a mobile home. The exterior was made out of Stucco with a faded whitewash barely covering the grays of the cement. Windowless, except for two in the front and one in the back and located next to an empty lot, it looked more like a large boulder in an open field than a building. The old house behind the store is where I my father and I stayed. If I needed my mother I ran across the yard and took over the store while my mother took care of my dad.
Looking back over the blocks of time that segmented our lives I think the time my mother spent store were the happiest of her life. She was an incredibly shy person, so much so I often wonder if my behavior is more genetic connection than traumatic. In social situations my mother always compressed her body when she talked as if she was a bellow pushing out the words and would always take a half step back as she spoke as if she were about to run for cover as her hand brutalized wad of tissue paper into vapor. Her first sound came out in a twitter, like a tiny bird. With me she never gave raised her voice, told a joke or laughed out loud.
Inside the store, however, she was relaxed and confident. Instead of being forced out into the world, the world came in to her. She conducted most interactions behind the protection of the long glass counter. There she took money or added up the charges of the items in small ledgers to be paid later, a separate book for each customer with their name on the top kept in a cardboard box on the shelf behind the counter. All those conversations had a purpose unrelated to her and any casual talk that took place was buttressed by confidence of the importance of her purpose as store owner. Those years in the store could be judged as her best. It was our home for six years. She cooked our meals on a two burner hotplate. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner there. Dave even ate lunch there upon occasion sitting at the little table. After school I swept up, stocked she shelves and waited on on the numerous kids invading the store for their afternoon candy. Standing on the platform watching the kids agonize over the rows of choices in the glass counter was a great feeling, however, counting out change to adults was the best. The old pillowy lounge chair was wide enough for me to curl up in and use the arm as a desk to do homework on. After dinner I would go to the house and watch television. My brother went to college the year after my father's death so I had the house to myself. My mother came home around eight thirty. She usually went to bed early.
Looking back over the blocks of time that segmented our lives I think the time my mother spent store were the happiest of her life. She was an incredibly shy person, so much so I often wonder if my behavior is more genetic connection than traumatic. In social situations my mother always compressed her body when she talked as if she was a bellow pushing out the words and would always take a half step back as she spoke as if she were about to run for cover as her hand brutalized wad of tissue paper into vapor. Her first sound came out in a twitter, like a tiny bird. With me she never gave raised her voice, told a joke or laughed out loud.
Inside the store, however, she was relaxed and confident. Instead of being forced out into the world, the world came in to her. She conducted most interactions behind the protection of the long glass counter. There she took money or added up the charges of the items in small ledgers to be paid later, a separate book for each customer with their name on the top kept in a cardboard box on the shelf behind the counter. All those conversations had a purpose unrelated to her and any casual talk that took place was buttressed by confidence of the importance of her purpose as store owner. Those years in the store could be judged as her best. It was our home for six years. She cooked our meals on a two burner hotplate. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner there. Dave even ate lunch there upon occasion sitting at the little table. After school I swept up, stocked she shelves and waited on on the numerous kids invading the store for their afternoon candy. Standing on the platform watching the kids agonize over the rows of choices in the glass counter was a great feeling, however, counting out change to adults was the best. The old pillowy lounge chair was wide enough for me to curl up in and use the arm as a desk to do homework on. After dinner I would go to the house and watch television. My brother went to college the year after my father's death so I had the house to myself. My mother came home around eight thirty. She usually went to bed early.
My mother had followed my father a thousand miles away from her brothers and sisters still living close together on the Llana Estacado in New Mexico. The brother and sisters who had rallied around her when she had passed thirty still single and childless and tricked my father into marrying her. Maggie, Ovie's older sister, was outgoing, gregarious and full adventure. She convinced my mother to put an ad in the Lonely Hearts Club of the Denver Post because she was approaching her mid thirties and still not married. My father saw the ad and sent a letter along with his picture. My mother refused to write back so Maggie secretly sent a letter and included my mother's picture.
Maggie, pretending to be my mother, corresponded regularly with my father. She used all her full of fun, cleverskills to develop a persona for my mother that a lonely man could not resist so my father drove the ten hours south from Denver to meet my mother to be. Maggie and the four brothers, Charlie, Custer, Lucian and Pride made sure he got a royal welcome, full of Southern Baptist love. My Uncle Charlie, a bachelor, stuck by my father's side to make sure he was throughly entertained enough not to notice my mother's lack of conversational abilities. It is possible that my father, a single, divorced father with a sixteen year son, married my mother's whole family because he soon moved to Lovington and joined the clan. Uncle Charlie became Dad's best friend and, decades later when humor was possible, told me the story. According to him Dad always wondered why my mother was quiet.
The co-conspirators, Maggie, my mother and Uncle Charlie
The Corner Grocery became my mother's sanctuary and our home. She cooked our meals there on a two burner hot plate and I did I my homework on an big enough to curl up in and use one of the arms as a desk. It also had been my father's second lease on life. Prior to owning the store he had been a manager for Gambles, a multiple purpose general store scattered across the plains states. Gambles often transferred him from store to store to set up operations. Corporate policy not adventurous spirit created our nomadic life. Shortly after arriving in Alliance to manage that store my father began to feel bad, bad enough to over come his reluctance to see a doctor for the undefined problem nagging him . The doctor could not find any reason for Dad's decline so, as a last option, sent him on a two day train ride to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota to be accessed. The clinic's prognosis was that the he was suffering from stress and suggested he simply have a glass of whiskey before going to bed. This was hilarious to us because neither my Dad, Mom, aunts, uncles, or anyone we knew, drank. My brother and I found an empty whiskey bottle in the trash and filled it with tea to give him as a joke.
Shorty after his return the store became available for sale and Dad bought them out, rented the building and the house behind that came with it and began renovations. Uncle Charlie came up to help rip out the floor, lay new, build shelves and paint. My father that I had only known in dress pants and brief case was suddenly firing up a truly frightening skill saw and crawling around on his knees pounding in nails and joking with his co-worker. I was old enough for them to allow me to participate and discover the joy of building and the affectionate banter that takes place between builders. Once the store was open I got to stand on the raised platform behind the glass counter and watch my father joke with the customers a step below him. A platform I enjoyed for years afterwards.
Before I was born, Dad had built his own desk out of tiger wood, dark with blond swaths running through it like rivers. This is where he would often do the extra paperwork he brought home from Gambles and later for the store. One evening my Father laid newspaper over the top of the desk and sat the adding machine, used to tally the amount of the purchases, on top of it. He then removed the black metal cover to expose the insides. With the cover on the machine looked simple, with numbered keys to press, a large crank handle and a roll of paper that the numbers were printed on when the handle was pulled down. Inside, the machine was unimaginably complex, with rows of metal tabs, gears and levers. I had never seen anything like it. I pressed close to Dad and laid my head sideways on the table looking in between the rows of metal plates and springs trying to get a grasp on how that machinery worked. The problem was that the long handle had not been operating smoothly. It had to be jiggled side to side to complete a stroke. That day it had stopped working at all, jamming itself halfway down. My Father worked the handle up and down as he slid a flat bar connected to it side to side and back and forth. He worked at it patiently, his fingers intertwining with the rods and gears trying to shift them back where they were supposed to be. Suddenly, he grabbed the whole machine and slammed it hard against the table. I jumped straight up and back about two feet. My Father stood staring at the machine clasped between his hands, his lips curling into a snarl that frightened me. “God damn it!” he screamed then slammed the machine down again, two, three, four times before throwing it in the trash and striding out the back door. Not long after that he was back at the doctor's.
A new x-ray at the local hospital revealed that his right lung was filled with cancer. His doctor sent for the records from Mayo Clinic and discovered that they had missed a golf ball sized lump of cancer in his right lung that was visible in their own X-rays, a bitter oversight. Such casual cruelty was a betrayal I cannot even describe right now. Fear took control of all thought after that.
The lung had to be removed so shortly after the discovery we drove Dad to Scotsbluff sixty miles to the south, a town twice the population of Alliance , to have his bad lung taken out in the hospital there.
As we waited back at the store, Ripper, our dog, was accidentally left in the car where he suffocated from the heat. The air was hot and wet when I opened the door and hugged his still body. That evening my mother drove us out of town beyond the sight of any houses. She pulled off to the side of the road and my brother and I laid Ripper in the grassy ditch, the slight breeze rustling the curls of his fur. We did not know what else to do.
My mother, brother and I stood on the platform as the train carrying my father pulled in. The power and size of the diesel locomotive was humbling, as if it could plow right through the middle of the town and up to our front door if it wanted to; easily scattering houses and cars to either side as if it was just walking through tall grass. Dad was rolled out of one of the cars on a gurney and taken by ambulance to the bedroom in our house. Ripper was not mentioned.
The ship that was to sail us to a new life suddenly became our life raft and, after Dad was gone, our home. Every afternoon after school I worked in the store waiting on customers, unpacking the deliveries of canned goods and stocking the shelves. Running the cash register and making change for kids my age made me feel really good as I handed the money down to them from my platform. With my brother soon gone to college the house stood empty. My mother was only there to sleep and bathe.
For six years we worked together in that store, a companionship I cherish to this day. However, when the time came for me to leave Alliance for Lincoln Nebraska that life had to come to and end. For my mother to stay behind was unthinkable so she sold the store, which did not include much more than old appliances, and we all moved. Once again our family, minus the one, were nomadic again embarking on new adventures none of us were really prepared for.
Shorty after his return the store became available for sale and Dad bought them out, rented the building and the house behind that came with it and began renovations. Uncle Charlie came up to help rip out the floor, lay new, build shelves and paint. My father that I had only known in dress pants and brief case was suddenly firing up a truly frightening skill saw and crawling around on his knees pounding in nails and joking with his co-worker. I was old enough for them to allow me to participate and discover the joy of building and the affectionate banter that takes place between builders. Once the store was open I got to stand on the raised platform behind the glass counter and watch my father joke with the customers a step below him. A platform I enjoyed for years afterwards.
Before I was born, Dad had built his own desk out of tiger wood, dark with blond swaths running through it like rivers. This is where he would often do the extra paperwork he brought home from Gambles and later for the store. One evening my Father laid newspaper over the top of the desk and sat the adding machine, used to tally the amount of the purchases, on top of it. He then removed the black metal cover to expose the insides. With the cover on the machine looked simple, with numbered keys to press, a large crank handle and a roll of paper that the numbers were printed on when the handle was pulled down. Inside, the machine was unimaginably complex, with rows of metal tabs, gears and levers. I had never seen anything like it. I pressed close to Dad and laid my head sideways on the table looking in between the rows of metal plates and springs trying to get a grasp on how that machinery worked. The problem was that the long handle had not been operating smoothly. It had to be jiggled side to side to complete a stroke. That day it had stopped working at all, jamming itself halfway down. My Father worked the handle up and down as he slid a flat bar connected to it side to side and back and forth. He worked at it patiently, his fingers intertwining with the rods and gears trying to shift them back where they were supposed to be. Suddenly, he grabbed the whole machine and slammed it hard against the table. I jumped straight up and back about two feet. My Father stood staring at the machine clasped between his hands, his lips curling into a snarl that frightened me. “God damn it!” he screamed then slammed the machine down again, two, three, four times before throwing it in the trash and striding out the back door. Not long after that he was back at the doctor's.
A new x-ray at the local hospital revealed that his right lung was filled with cancer. His doctor sent for the records from Mayo Clinic and discovered that they had missed a golf ball sized lump of cancer in his right lung that was visible in their own X-rays, a bitter oversight. Such casual cruelty was a betrayal I cannot even describe right now. Fear took control of all thought after that.
The lung had to be removed so shortly after the discovery we drove Dad to Scotsbluff sixty miles to the south, a town twice the population of Alliance , to have his bad lung taken out in the hospital there.
As we waited back at the store, Ripper, our dog, was accidentally left in the car where he suffocated from the heat. The air was hot and wet when I opened the door and hugged his still body. That evening my mother drove us out of town beyond the sight of any houses. She pulled off to the side of the road and my brother and I laid Ripper in the grassy ditch, the slight breeze rustling the curls of his fur. We did not know what else to do.
My mother, brother and I stood on the platform as the train carrying my father pulled in. The power and size of the diesel locomotive was humbling, as if it could plow right through the middle of the town and up to our front door if it wanted to; easily scattering houses and cars to either side as if it was just walking through tall grass. Dad was rolled out of one of the cars on a gurney and taken by ambulance to the bedroom in our house. Ripper was not mentioned.
The ship that was to sail us to a new life suddenly became our life raft and, after Dad was gone, our home. Every afternoon after school I worked in the store waiting on customers, unpacking the deliveries of canned goods and stocking the shelves. Running the cash register and making change for kids my age made me feel really good as I handed the money down to them from my platform. With my brother soon gone to college the house stood empty. My mother was only there to sleep and bathe.
For six years we worked together in that store, a companionship I cherish to this day. However, when the time came for me to leave Alliance for Lincoln Nebraska that life had to come to and end. For my mother to stay behind was unthinkable so she sold the store, which did not include much more than old appliances, and we all moved. Once again our family, minus the one, were nomadic again embarking on new adventures none of us were really prepared for.
