Those Deep Elm Brown's Ferry Blues

THOSE DEEP ELM BROWN'S FERRY BLUES/Wüliam Gay I HEARD A WHIPPOORWILL last night, the old man said. Say you did? Rabon asked without interest. Rabon was just in from his schoolteaching job. He seated himself in the armchair across from the bed and hitched up his trouser legs and glanced covertly at his watch. The old man figured Rabon would put in his obligatory five minutes then go in his room and turn the stereo on. It sounded just like them I used to hear inAlabama when I was a boy, Scribner said. Sometimes he would talk about whippoorwills or the phases of the moon simply because he got some perverse pleasure out of annoying Rabon. Rabon wanted his father's mind sharp and the old man on top of things, and it irritated him when the old man's mind grew preoccupied with whippoorwills or drifted back across the Tennessee state line into Alabama. Scribner was developing a sense of just how far he could push Rabon into annoyance, and he fell silent, remembering how irritated Rabon had been that time in Nashville when Scribner had recognized the doctor. The doctor was telling Rabon what kind of shape Scribner was in, talking over the old man's head as if he wasn't even there. All this time Scribner was studying the doctor with a speculative look on his face, trying to remember where he had seen him. He could almost but not quite get a handle on it. Physically he's among the most impressive men of his age I've examined , the doctor was saying. There's nothing at all to be concerned about there, and his heart is as strong as a man half his age. But Alzheimer's is irreversible, and we have to do what we can to control it. Scribner had remembered. He was grinning at the doctor. I've seen you before, ain't I? Excuse me? I remember you now, the old man said. I seen you in Alabama. Tm afraid not, the doctor said. I'm from Maine and this is the farthest south I've ever been. Scribner couldn't figure why the doctor would lie about it. Sure you was. We was at a funeral. You was wearing a green checked suit and a little derby hat and carryin a black shiny walkin stick. There was a little spotted dog there lookin down in the grave and whinin and you rapped it right smart with that cane. I hate a dog at a funeral, you said. The Missouri Review · 7 The doctor was looking sympathetic, and Scribner knew he was going to try to lie out of it. Rabon was just looking annoyed. Who were you burying? he asked. This confused Scribner. He tried to think. Hell, I don't know, he said. Some dead man. I'm afraid you've got me mixed up with someone else, the doctor said. Scribner was becoming more confused yet, the sand he was standing on was shifting, water rising about his shoes, his ankles. I reckon I have, he finally said. That would have been sixty-odd years ago and you'd have to be a hell of a lot older than what you appear to be. In the car Rabon said, If all you can do is humiliate me with these Alabama funeral stories I wish you would just let me do the talking when we have to come to Nashville. You could handle that, all right, the old man said. Now Scribner was back to thinking about whippoorwills. How Rabon was a science teacher who only cared about dead things and books. If you placed a whippoorwill between the pages of an enormous book and pressed it like a flower until it was a paper-thin collage of blood and feathers and fluted bone then Rabon might take an interest in that. You remember that time a dog like to took your leg off and I laid it out with a hickory club? No I don't, and I don't know where you dredge all this stuff up. Dredge up hell, the old man...