Kim Bradley
At midnight, when a commotion started in the hallway of The Pines Rest Home, Dell Finklea had been contemplating of all things, Red Eagle, the Creek Indian chief whose exploits were glorified in courthouse square reenactments and grade-school plays. His spectacular leap by horseback from a ragged red bluff into the Alabama River, the militia at his heels, came to Dell as she rocked in her recliner. She imagined the mysterious gifts lining his headstone—snail shells, gemstones and baby-food jars of painted sand. Red Eagle, his father a Scottish trader, his mother a native Creek, was also known as William Weatherford, his headstone, engraved with both names. All her life she’d heard it was haunted by the sad ghost of a Creek Princess. Dell felt a tug of empathy for the poor spirit dressed in white roaming the South Alabama woods. Disgusted with herself, Dell maneuvered from the chair, and reached for her walker. Romanticizing was not like her, and she chalked it up to the ungodly amount of sitting she had come to do in this confounded nursing home.
Judging from the hollering and bickering, doors opening and slamming, Dell understood the latest raucous once again had to do with Mr. Steele. In the last two weeks since he’d been moved from the south wing to the room across from hers, he’d proved himself a despicable neighbor. Reruns of the Christian Broadcasting Network blasted from his television night and day. He rolled his wheelchair right up to her door and stared. A heavy wooden abacus, a child’s toy, sat across his lap, and he liked to move the colored beads until they snapped with a fierce warning, a foreboding countdown.
Dell hated to admit that the worst of all this, more so than the noise and the menacing stares, was he’d taken all the attention. In her relatively short time at The Pines, waiting out her rehab on a new hip, the staff, especially Peaches and Calvin, had become her friends.
They called Dell feisty, appreciated her rebellious nature. They liked to tell secrets. Now, they’d taken to Mr. Steele; they watched his programs with him, pushed him up and down the hall. Sometimes Peaches counted numbers with him. How couldn’t they see? There was nothing but evil in that old man’s eyes.
She got a firm grip on her walker, and hobbled to the door. Peaches stood outside Mr. Steele’s door shaking her head. Calvin grinned. They had one of their secrets.
“What’s the old man done now?” Dell said.
“Got up in the bed with the bus lady.”
Dell gasped and gripped her walker. “Miss Annie? She okay?”
Annie, the bus lady, was 90-years-old, a tiny woman, mostly bedridden, until every other day when she remembered some long-ago bus. And, then all she wanted was to get on that thing and get out of this place. Dell liked her, and always made sure she used her gentle voice to break the news that the bus hadn’t come. God knows it never would.
“She’s fine,” Peaches said. “You know how she is.”
Dell didn’t like the sound of that. If Mr. Steele could come and go as he pleased, and no one took this seriously, what would he do next? The voices from the TV were bloated yet shrill, some god-awful women’s choir. “How we supposed to sleep around here?”
“He needs his TV,” Calvin said.
“You ought to put a governor on that thing. Long time ago, my husband put one on the riding lawn mower so I wouldn’t drive it too fast. You give me a wrench and a quarter-inch spool of wire, I can work you one out.”
“It’s late,” Peaches said. “You go on to bed.”
Dell scowled and thought of when the two of them would stop by and tell her the comings and goings of The Pines, how the new receptionist was sweet on Calvin, and how Mr. Dorsey got a new electric wheelchair and ran over his colostomy bag. Dell must have looked forlorn, because just as she was settling back into her chair, Calvin stuck his head in the door, “Anything we can get you?”
“A gin and tonic,” Dell said, turning to the word puzzle. She knew a good gin. After her first husband died at the age of 34, massive heart attack, there was a string of husbands, all alcoholics, some violent. There were few favorites, but she’d adored the sweet drunk from North Alabama who liked to drive around with a strong drink in hand. He preferred gin with a nice whiff of pine and juniper. She had long lost the taste for alcohol; she just wanted something of the old days.
“Now you know—“
She waved him off. “I know. I know.” Of course, the nursing home didn’t allow alcohol, but the county was dry, and somebody would have to drive all the way over to Escambia County if there was to be anything close to gin. “Tonic, then. It’s all I ask.”
To his credit, he pulled out a notebook, scribbled something, and told her goodnight.
Even with the door closed, she could still hear the fund drive on the 700 Club, Mr. Steele shouting out the 800 number. That was all she’d ever heard of his voice. It was as if the only language he knew was numbers, all oily and gravely. Otherwise, he seemed to be mute. The man hardly sleapt, and Dell wondered why they didn’t give him something as they were pushing pastel pills in Dixie cups all day and night like this was a 24-hour pharmacy. She went back to her chair, melancholy replacing the wild Indian stories. This woeful feeling had crept up on her. Most days she could work it through like a word puzzle, but this was a bout that would not go away, and she had god only knows more days here. For fifteen years, she had lived in the next town over with her son, Willie. He owned the small brick duplex, but he’d extended his stay out on the oil rig in the Gulf, and Medicaid would keep her here long as she had money to give. The TV was louder and louder, and finally with much effort she hauled herself back up and went into the hallway. Peaches and Calvin were gone. She eased the door to Mr. Steele’s room open. The old man was asleep, his mouth open.
The room smelled of ripe bananas and stale bread, and the further in she went, her hands shook. The overhead lights flickered, and the room was hot and steamy. How did he sleep like this? She watched his halted breath, his hands jerking now and then. In a flash, one eye opened and closed. Did dreams even come to this man? She tried to make herself feel sorry for Mr. Steele, but the jut of his jaw, and his wretched snores got so far under her skin that she wanted to turn and leave. She wouldn’t let him scare her. She had come here on business. The TV and VCR were on a rolling cart, and beneath it VHS tapes labeled 700 Club, 1975-1977, were stacked on a shelf. She leaned down, got a good grip on the cord, and yanked hard as she could, stealing the breath out of young Pat Robertson. The silence was a miracle.
Back in her room, Dell celebrated with an oatmeal cookie and apple juice. She did her hip exercises and stretched her arms. There was a full moon, and when she looked into the skinny rectangle of a window to the concrete patio, she could see her own reflection. Aside from a coy smirk, she had the same eagle’s hook of a nose her sister, Helen, and their mother had had, the same dark eyes; she’d always suspected they were from Creek Indian blood. She might have preferred that pretty petite nose of her father’s people from Evergreen, but there was something to be said about looking like a princess who gifted and thieved and roamed around out there in the riverbed just as free as you please.
When she awoke at dawn, it was to an iron-hot sensation on her arm, Mr. Steele staring at her with dead eyes from his wheelchair. She screamed, but he didn’t back away. His finger pinched her forearm like he was moving beads. She kicked and hollered until her hip throbbed. Calvin came in hollering, removed the wooden abacus from a pocket on the side of Mr. Steele’s wheelchair, and maneuvered the old man’s stiff fingers to grip the beads. “There, work your beads, old man. Leave Miss Dell alone.”
With a glare, Mr. Steele shifted the blue beads up and down as if counting Dell’s days.
“All he needs is to keep his hands busy.”
Dell blinked, felt the lump in her throat. She wouldn’t let them see her tears. “Some of us more than others.”
Calvin laughed, and she laughed with him best she could. Calvin pushed Mr. Steele back across the hall, beads clicking, her days numbered.
Peaches came to check Dell’s arm. The skin was purpling already. “Now, what why did you go and do that to Mr. Steele? He’s a helpless old man.”
“I’m filing a report.”
“You’re just fine, but you ought to know better. He’s a old man,” Peaches said, rubbing a wintergreen cream over the bruise. “He used to be a good man.”
“I don’t care what he used to be. He’s something different now.”
“Show some compassion. We never do know what we’ll end up like one day.”
“Get me a lock on my door.”
“You know the regulations.”
Miss Annie was making her rounds, and she hollered out to no one in particular, “The bus here yet?”
“Not yet,” Dell called, but her voice was weak; a thick sadness hit her hard; she held the ice to her arm. Tears pricked her eyes. There was no ride out of this place.
When Peaches left, Dell sat in her chair, but could not concentrate on her puzzle. The TV was back on louder than ever. She kept straining to hear over the voice of Pat Robertson. Was that the shuffling of Mr. Steele’s loafers? The click clack of his beads? The wheelchair clipping the walls? She couldn’t think. She couldn’t locate the simplest of words in her puzzle. When the intercom announced the dining room was open, she didn’t budge. She’d stay here and eat cookies.
The next day when she returned to her room after breakfast, Dell discovered that all her good Avon lipsticks, her favorite peachy corals and orchid pinks, were missing from her drawer. The gaudy reds she saved for special occasions were scattered about the floor, their pretty plastic cases cracked. She went straight across the hall; for the first time since after the surgery, she felt strong enough not to need her walker. Mr. Steele faced the door. At first she thought he was wearing a dime-store mask. His face was a clown’s, his eyes, gun metal gray. He’d circled his mouth so it gave the idea he was smiling big and wide, and he’d drawn thick stripes across his forehead and cheeks. His teeth and fingers and even the beads were hot pink. He held a lipstick in each hand like crude crayons and jabbed at the air. “My colors,” she said. “My pretty colors.”
They would not move Mr. Steele to another room, Peaches explained. It would take authorization from the family, and they’d already said no twice. Instead, they’d put Dell on a waiting list. She was telling this to Dell as they stood by the picture window in the common room. Dell would not look at Peaches. She stared out at the parking lot so she could watch people come and go, and marveled at how easy it was for them.
“I told you,” Peaches said. “You ought not to have got on his bad side.”
The day was just right—thin stringy clouds against a pale blue sky. The pretty new leaves on the sweetgums shook with a breeze. A good-looking man, about Dell’s age, parked his car, and upon noticing her there, nodded and waved. She nodded back.
“I told you,” Peaches was saying again. “I told you not to make Mr. Steele mad.”
They had a time getting the lipstick off Mr. Steele’s face, and finally gave up and wheeled him down to the hair salon. The lady there had some special cream that would take it off. There was chaos and coddling, and from her end of the hallway, Dell laughed to herself just a little. It was going to take them a long time to clean that man up. It gave her a little satisfaction, but her arm still hurt, and she felt a cold sweat break out into a feeling of dread and longing. It was then that the idea came to her.
Even with Mr. Steele gone to the hair salon, it was hard to be in his room alone. The banana odor lingered, and someone had cleaned the abacas with bleach. There was no sign of her lipsticks, but that was for the best. She didn’t want to see how they’d ended up, ruined and broken. Using her pillow case as a bag, she got to work filling it with the VHS tapes until she could hardly lift it.
In the hallway, Miss Annie was calling for the bus, and Dell didn’t have the heart to say a thing.
She went out through the front door onto the sidewalk, listening to Miss Annie’s sweet voice turn desperate.
On the sidewalk outside the front door of The Pines, she looked left and then right, and when no one was coming, she headed to the big trash bin by the parking lot. She dragged the heavy bag behind her, the video tapes scraping through the fabric. The trash can isn’t good enough for these things, she thought. They need to be far from here. But, where? Dell looked toward the patio, and then ahead to the parking lot. The late morning sun beat down on the chrome bumpers. She thought of that nice man who had waved to her. On the second row, beside an old blue truck, was the man’s sedan, a bland brown older model, the windows down. Dell got a wild hair.
She heaved the bag up and dropped its contents onto the backseat. How long would it take for him to notice the mystery bag of 700 Club tapes. Would he return them to The Pines? Dell imagined the tapes being driven far from Mr. Steele’s VCR, and just as she heaved them through the window, she noticed the friendly man’s car keys dangling from the ignition.
In the Chevy Malibu, Dell crossed the county line, giddy. Despite her years away, the red-clay roads and ragged bluffs were unchanged. These were the strangled woods that howled in her dreams. The sun scooped into the pines, turning the sky above it the prettiest apricot. All around her, the April afternoon glinted hot points of pink and orange and yellow. It was the colors of these woods she’d missed so much.
Around curving ravines and sudden plummets to the river, the Chevy’s power steering became difficult to maneuver. It had been years since she’d been behind the wheel. She wondered how far she was from Red Eagle’s bluff. Dell came to a crossroads, pine forests on either side thinned by twisters or logging. She drove on another ten miles, and pulled into a filling station she had never known, hollered to a man washing a brand-new Pontiac, its undercarriage marbled in red clay.
“Sir? Which way to Red Eagle’s grave?”
Gliding a squeegee over the wind shield, he looked at her, wide-eyed. He was handsome. She straightened her blouse, smoothed her hair, wished she’d had some of her red lipstick. Even at her age, there were days she thought she might get lucky. “Is it close?” She blinked, read his name tag. “Ray Lee?”
“You gone the wrong way. It’s back toward Monroe County.” He laughed, dipped the squeegee into soapy water, and cleaned her windshield though she had not asked.
Dell looked out at the woods around her. These woods looked familiar. Didn’t they? Weren’t they the woods she dreamed of? A thick fog of confusion fell around her.
Ray Lee cleared his throat, and peeked in at her again. “Ma’m where you come from?”
Dell considered the question. Where had she come from? A cramped room with fisheye views of red birds crowding a plastic feeder, Mr. Steele prowling into her room, pinching the soft underside of her arms, rummaging through the chest of drawers for her best Avon. Loud gospel blaring from the television, a mean old man trying to make good the time he had left. She had never defined it. She had not even imagined escaping. For the first time since her tumble off the back-door step, the hip surgery, the rehab and physical therapy, the name of where she had been all this time finally registered. “Hell. That’s where I’ve been.”
Ray Lee looked like he felt sorry, like he didn’t know what to say, and then he eyed the bird gun on the passenger seat. She should have hidden it in the trunk. She should tell him she’d not noticed it till she was way past the city limits, that this wasn’t even her car, but she didn’t like Ray
Lee anymore.
Dell started the engine. Left for brake. Right for gas.
She was driving aimlessly. Undoubtedly by this time, someone had reported her and the car missing. She imagined Peaches hollering into the intercom, the one they used to call Bingo. “Y’all, Miss Dell’s stole an old man’s car and run off to kingdom come.”
Up ahead the pony truss of an old one-lane bridge arched, its triangle skeleton peeling. Her driving was rusty as the railings. She squeezed the steering wheel and prayed. The river, leaden and wild, raced below. Dell crossed the one-lane to safe ground, and there, the Malibu bumped to a stop. She turned the key—nothing but a whirr and a hum. Dell fiddled with the pedals, wrestled the parking brake. The gas tank gauge sat on Empty. She would not find her way back.
Dell took the bag from the back seat, and made her way across the bridge, leaned on the cold framework. Below, fallen branches clawed the current. Creeks parted from the river, digging kidney-shaped basins out of orange Alabama mud. They were like the creeks of her childhood, this one a more sinister pool. She heard Pa perched on the bank in his church suit, a tweed hat, plaid suspenders, saying, “Builds character,” as he pitched Dell and her sisters—Helen, Millie, and Lola—into a cloudy pond, water moccasins stretching from branches baring bleached throats. Dell never did learn to swim.
One by one, she threw the VHS tapes over the bridge railing. Most bounced along the muddy bank, but one plopped into the creek, and sunk. Dell heard the sheriff’s sedan before she saw it easing toward the bridge with a calculated approach. She contemplated her options. She wished she could jump, escape unscathed like Red Eagle, but the bank was riddled with tangled trees, and if she did, she’d only be caught in a mire of branches. There was a slick path down the ravine, and using the bird gun like a cane, Dell got herself as far down as she could. Her hip throbbed as she slid and crawled toward the water, passing grimy VHS tapes on her way.
The sheriff called out in a kind but gruff voice, “Miss Finklea? Don’t get yourself hurt.”
The gun was light in Dell’s hands, and muscle memory glimmered inside her, but she was old, and her aim was off, and the sheriff hopped and yelled like a girl as the BBs dinged his toes. Dell dropped the gun, and sat back on the damp ground, her grand and shameful return to The Pines inevitable.
The sheriff was wide and heavy-footed, and his descent to the river would be slow. Dell was tired, more tired than she’d ever been, and she closed her eyes at the recollection of a dream from the night before. There was the Indian princess beckoning her, and Dell had followed these very woods barefoot, collecting trinkets—smooth stones, miniature pine cones and whittled sticks of cedar—for Red Eagle’s grave. When Dell opened her eyes, the sheriff was speaking softly to her, and below, the wild orange river churned past.
Dell wished she could jump, but this bank, riddled with tangled trees, was not as steep as the one from which Red Eagle had leapt by horseback. Despite being only 1/3 Creek, he had cast his lot with the Creeks in the War of 1812, leading a violent attack against the militia. That jump to safety did not kill him. Years later, he was hunting when a friend killed an albino deer. Believing the death of the sacred animal was an omen, Red Eagle returned home and died three days later.