Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

everyone has things which they can’t deal with reasonably. A more reasonable man than John would be hard to find—so reasonable that he seldom was able to choose sides. But the business with his mother reduced him to having no sense. He chose sides then, it might be said, but unreasonably, putting himself at odds with nature itself. See, he acted like he had no intention whatsoever of granting that everything must have an end. His reason simply failed him there, and he would chase off to Iowa City and lead doctors back to his mother by the throat, demanding that they put an end to her ailment, and they would tell him, sometimes right in front of her, ‘There’s nothing wrong but age. You’re getting along in your years, Mrs. Montgomery.’ And she would smile as though having received a compliment on a new hat. But John would shake in rage. ‘What do you mean!’ he would demand. ‘No one dies of old age. It’s something wrong that takes them, some malfunction. Fix it.’

“But, like I say, that shouldn’t be held against anyone, because we all have our undoings—where reason’ll be cast to the wind. And don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying here that I admire that or that it impresses me; for instance, in the case of my Aunt Winifred, who let the business with Jack and that girl from Plainsville poison her whole life. In fact, if there’s any principle to live by, it would be reason—live reasonably; a hundred times a day one should stop and ask, ‘Is this reasonable, what I’m doing?’ There simply can’t be enough reasonableness in someone’s life.”

Despite John’s unceasing refusal to let it happen, his mother slid away one night in her sleep, and he found her curled up, the quilt tucked under her chin, the next morning. At first hedidn’t react to it at all, closed the door and sat down on the twisted sheets and blankets covering the sofa. Then, when his true feelings began to clear in him, he had a terrific urge to drink, and went to the kitchen in search of a bottle. Underneath the sink, he thought. But there was none. He thought when he’d last seen it—the bottle of 86-proof bourbon. Then he remembered that he’d given it away. How long? Yes, that would have been to Myra’s boy—fourteen years ago. The realization let another increment of his true feelings loose, and he started back toward the couch. But the full impact came sooner than he expected, and he didn’t make it. As he looked at the door to his mother’s room, the thunderhead inside him ripped open. The downpour temporarily blinded him in deep purple, tears flowed like water on his face, and holding his shaking hand out toward the wall to support him, he cried like an animal shot through the stomach.

Sarah and July came downstairs and it was hours before the shaking subsided.

Later, after the funeral, July heard him say, “When I was a little boy, I used to lie in bed and imagine that my parents were dead. That very thought terrified me. They told me, ‘It’s just a make-believe worry. We’ll always be here,’ and that comforted me. But now it’s just like it happened then. It could be no worse. . . . Who will take care of me now?”

July’s only real interest in his grandmother’s death was in the mechanics of it. He had wanted to (though he didn’t) go into her room and look at her—if, indeed, she was still there—to see if she looked any different. Sarah told him that “Grandma’s body—her dead body—is all that’s left. Grandma herself is gone.” So he knew that behind the door lay something, but that something wasn’t his grandma. Then at the funeral he got to see into the casket, and he wasn’t nearly as horrified as he had thought he might be, looking at a personless body. The unrealness of death—the chalk color and closed eyes—was so completelyuninteresting. He realized Della couldn’t possibly be lying on the pink pillow, which had been his only fear—that somehow everyone was wrong and she hadn’t been able to get away and was imprisoned inside her dead self. But he could see that wasn’t true, and he could see everyone else at the funeral knew that (except maybe his father). The minister talked of heaven and Della being with Wilson, herald angels and the mansion in the sky. Naturally, July accepted it all.

For several weeks, maybe as long as several months, he was troubled by his father, who didn’t at all seem to be acting in accordance with the way things were. He acted oddly, as though he hadn’t even known Della was just an old lady and was ready to die soon, and now she had and that was good. July could see no reason to be very upset—not nearly so upset as when their cat had been run over. Old people die and that’s that. But his father acted as though he didn’t know that.

Then slowly the depression lifted, and the face shadow, which had at one time been dark gray, turned ashen, but never went away. From that time on, the past had hold of John, and though he could still be “reasonable,” he no longer desired to go forward. He wanted to go back. Instead of creating, he wanted to recapture. Instead of dreaming, he wanted to remember.

Many times during those first several months John took time off from work to be with his family—even afternoons when he refused to return to the garage after lunch, though his lot was filled with people waiting for him. He gave up working Saturdays altogether. He told July, then seven and a half, of a man named Kingfisher. They’d gone for a ride and stopped just before dark in a small diner in Liberty. John ordered a cup of coffee and the tired waitress brought that and a strawberry