This was a good try, since Mom has a highly developed sense of guilt, but after a couple seconds, she sees through Jack’s ploy. “No, you’ve had a long trip. You go with Penn.” She takes my hand. “Drive Jack over to our house and get him settled.”
“No,” Jack says. “I’ve got a hotel room right up the road.”
“That’s ridiculous! Why waste good money on a hotel?”
Jack smiles and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, Peg.”
“I’ll put him up with me, Mom,” I interject, knowing it’s the quickest way out of this pointless discussion.
“You two go on,” she insists. “Get Jack settled. I’ll take a break later on, after Tom’s had some rest and those enzyme tests come back.”
Jack hesitates, then hugs my mom once more and says, “All right, Peg. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
Leaning down over my father, Jack squeezes his hand once more, until Dad opens his eyes and nods as if to say I’m still here.
“I’ll take care of everything,” Jack says. “You get some rest.”
After Dad nods, Jack straightens up and quickly walks to the door of the cubicle, wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. Mom and I follow him with our eyes, and then I go after him. At the nurses’ station, Jack picks up a weekend bag, and we start toward the hospital lobby.
“Did you fly right into Natchez?” I ask.
“Hell, yes. They didn’t have any rental cars, but when the guy who runs the airport found out why I’d come, he offered to drive me into town himself. I knew then that I was back in the South.”
In the lobby, a nurse stops me and asks how Dad is doing. I give her a brief update, and then Jack and I head for the parking lot, where the late afternoon sun has come from behind the clouds.
“So,” my uncle says in a man-to-man voice. “You think Tom’s going to make it?”
“For a while,” I reply. “If Dr. Bruen hadn’t come back and placed that stent, we’d have been picking out a casket today. But Dad doesn’t have that long, regardless of this outcome. His heart’s about worn out, Jack. He’s going to be in failure before long. If he’d quit the cigars and ease back on self-prescribing pain medication, he might stretch that out for two or three years, but . . .”
“I know. He can’t keep practicing medicine without the pain meds, because of his arthritis, right?”
“Right.”
“Then forget that.”
“Mom’s pushing him hard to retire.”
Jack chuckles. “Never happen. The Lone Ranger dies in the saddle. Might as well chisel that on his tombstone now.”
“Let’s take Dad’s car,” I suggest, pointing to a five-year-old black BMW 740, which I bought my father with the proceeds of my second book.
Jack nods, then makes his way around to the passenger side.
“He really thought this was the end,” I say.
As Jack looks at me across the roof of the car, I tell him about Dad’s urgent request to see me before he died, then his later denial.
“You have no idea what it might have been about?” Jack asks.
“No.”
“Something about money, maybe?”
“Could have been. But Dad never cared much about money. And I think all that’s pretty well settled.”
“Tell you to take care of your mother, maybe?”
“He already knows I’d do that. I think it’s something else. But now that he thinks he has a good chance of surviving, he doesn’t want to tell me.”
“Did he know his chances of survival had improved by the time you asked him the question?”
I think about this. “He knew that Bruen had placed a new stent. He couldn’t know how badly his heart had been damaged, because it was far too early for diagnostic enzyme tests. But I think he sensed that he was going to make it.”
Jack purses his lips with a speculative cast to his eyes. “Some dark secret? That’s what you’re thinking?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“Well . . . maybe together we can get it out of him before I go back home.”
With the push of a button on Dad’s key ring, I unlock the car and we get inside.
“Smells like cigars,” Jack says with a smile. “Every car he ever had smelled like this.”
“I hope this one always does.”
The heavy doors close with a satisfying thunk.
“Tom loves this car,” Jack says. “He says it reminds him of his time serving in Germany.”
I back out of the parking space and pull up to Jefferson Davis Boulevard. “Where do you want to go?”
“Why don’t we go to a drive-through and get some coffee, then take a drive? I haven’t been to Natchez in six years, and that was just for Christmas. I must have seen a hundred downed trees during my ride in from the airport. Big oaks.”
“Katrina hit us pretty hard, even up here. Some families were without power for a week.”
“I’d like to see that gambling boat that nearly sank. Or that you nearly sank. Is it still down under the bluff?”
“No. They’ve towed it to a refitting yard in New Orleans for repairs. I hear the company’s going to sell it, and the new owners may reopen in three or four months. Can’t let a cash cow sit idle.”
“I’d like to see the river, anyway,” Jack says. “Being near something of that scale has a way of putting problems into perspective.”
“The river it is.”
St. Catherine’s Hospital stands on high ground about two miles inland from the Mississippi River. I turn north on Highway 61, then pull into a McDonald’s drive-through lane and order two coffees, and a chicken sandwich for Jack.
“What’s happening in California?” I ask, making conversation.
“Same as it ever was, ever was, ever was.”
“And Frances?” This question carries some weight; Jack’s wife was diagnosed with lupus eight years ago.
“She’s doing as well as can be expected. Up and down, you know. She lives for the grandkids now. Jack Junior just extended his fellowship at Stanford, so we see him a lot. And Julia just moved from Sun to a start-up you haven’t heard of yet.”