100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Dead End by Alvin S. Fick

What a surprise it was to see Sweets yesterday — and not altogether a pleasant one.

By the time I got my chair turned around in the kitchen after I heard him knock and rolled through the arch into the living room, he had walked in.

It was just like Sweets to do that, just walk in. He stood there in the center of the room looking around, his pudgy face divided by a wide toothless grin that made his head look like a Bender melon split by a cleaver. Not a bad idea, that.

I had come back from a ride down to the Heron Valley overlook just before his car pulled up in front. “You’ve put on weight, Sweets,” I said. I looked at the bulge above and below his narrow belt. He eased into a rocker facing the couch. Aside from my bed and a dresser, that’s about all the furniture left in my house. When you live in a wheelchair, that’s the first move you make — you get rid of all the road hazards.

“It’s been near four years, old buddy,” Sweets said. He shifted his weight in the rocker. It creaked in protest. I noticed that the pressure within had tested every fiber in his soiled chino pants. The stitching down the front had surrendered in the struggle and the zipper was exposed, a silver snake that caught the light from the west window. It was like Sweets to go around that way. My distaste for him spilled over into my voice.

“Don’t ‘old buddy’ me, Sweets. What do you want? What are you after now, after all this time? I have nothing left.”

“That ain’t no way to talk to an old friend. Ain’t I the one who told the boys they should build the ramps for you? Ain’t I the one who said you need a low counter in the kitchen for cooking and eating? Ain’t I the one who hung those bars on chains in the bathroom so you could get in and out of the tub — take care of yourself?”

I couldn’t help but mimic him. “Yeah, and ain’t you the one that got careless setting off that dynamite charge in the quarry that put me in this chair for life?”

Sweets wriggled his button nose as if he smelled something bad. It twitched side to side, a pink crabapple adrift on a sea of bread dough.

“That was a accident. That was five years ago. You shouldn’t oughta hold a grudge like that. Lord knows I wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

Wouldn’t hurt a flea. When he was eleven, after having been punished by his father for beating his dog. Sweets had let a mean bull out of its stall into the barnyard. There it gored and killed the old man, who was patching a watering trough. Everybody thought the bull had broken the tie rope, but a few days later in school I heard him bragging how he had cut the rope and rubbed dirt on the frayed ends.

Wouldn’t hurt a flea. I remembered how Sweets used to catch flies when we were kids in the one-room country school we both attended. He’d pull off their wings, then tie a thin thread to one leg.

“See my pet,” he’d say. He would draw a blob of ink from the inkwell with his pen and wet the fly with it. Then he’d walk the fly across the paper on his desk, or on the nice white collar on the dress of the girl in front of him.

“Chinese writing,” he used to say, and his laugh shook fat even then.

Why the girls took to him so, I never understood. But if I did not understand then, his success with women when he grew older was even more of a mystery to me. He’d had three wives — my Norah among them. His first, Charlene, fell from a boat and drowned when the two of them were fishing in Heron River. Ellie hung herself from a rafter tie in the attic of their house. I stopped taking the Heron Falls Gazette when I read Norah’s obituary six months after she left me for Sweets. The story said she fell down the cellar stairs with a load of laundry in her arms and hit her head on a protruding rock in the fieldstone foundation.

Sweets. What a name. Did I tell you how he got it? His last name is Sharger, but the kids in school found it hard to say and seeing it was so close to the kitchen staple and how the girls loved him, they hung Sweets on him.

My life has always been tied to his in some way. My dislike for him, begun in boyhood, hardened into something deeper long before he hit the switch that sent a piece of rock into my spine, long before he took away my Norah. I never held anything against her for leaving half a man. The bitter part was her going to Sweets.

“You still in the quarry?” I said, desperate for any topic to get my mind off Norah.

“Yep.” Sweets brightened. “Been foreman ever since Jeff Bellins died.”

“Jeff’s dead? He was younger than either of us.”

“One of those things. An accident. You know better than most that stone quarries is dangerous places.” He stared at my wasted legs.

“How did it happen?”

Sweets’ voice turned slick and oily. “He was careless. I seen it all happen. He was standing by the big flat belt that drives the crusher. He must of leaned over to look at something and the belt caught his clothes — pulled him kerspang right into the pulley. Tore him up fierce. I was only a step away but I couldn’t do anything for him. Poor guy. He yelled just once.”

“How long ago was this? How did Debbie take it?” I remembered Jeffs slender little auburn-haired wife. She was nearly as pretty as Norah and ten years younger.

“Yes, Debbie. I felt terrible sorry for Debbie. Guess I understood better than most how lonely she was. Let’s see, that was a couple of months after Norah passed on, and we both — me and Debbie — took to leanin’ on each other. We had happy times together so we up and got married.”

“Is she out in the car? Is she with you? I’d love to see her.”

The corners of Sweets’ mouth turned down and for a moment I thought I detected a hint of moisture in his eyes.

“I wish I could. Sure wish I could. But she took sick less than a month back. Got off her feed and just kind of pined away.” Sweets seemed genuinely moved. “I buried her two weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Sweets.”

“Well, we got to go on living.” His mood changed. “I just came over to see how you’re getting on. It don’t pay to lose touch with old friends. That’s the way I’ve always felt about your family. A day or two ago I got to thinking on it, the way I haven’t seen you in years. Then I got to wondering about your brother, Harry. He moved to California, didn’t he?”

I nodded.

“And Hester, your younger sister, where is she now? I suppose she’s off and married with a slew of kids.”

“No, Hester isn’t married. She’s up in Augusta. She has a job with the state.” The moment the words were out I wished my tongue had been paralyzed too.

“Say! I bet she’s on Debbie’s Christmas-card address list I threw out when I was cleaning her dresser this morning.” He brushed away an imaginary tear. “I haven’t burned that trash yet. When I get home I’ll dig that list out and sit right down and write Hester a letter. Maybe I’ll phone her. That would be nice.”

My insides felt knotted and cold. I hoped he hadn’t noticed the way I’d gripped the arms of the wheelchair.

He rambled on. “I ought to drop in on her someday just for old times’ sake. She was just a pretty little snippet when we was getting out of school, but I bet she’s a real lady now.”

The fear in my belly was a coiled cold serpent. “Sweets, why don’t you wait a day or two?” My mind raced in search for something to delay him. “I have some pictures of Hester taken when she and some of her girl friends were on a swimming party last summer.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. “She’s a real beauty.”

Sweets heaved his bulk out of the chair. “Are they in your bedroom? I’ll go and get them. What drawer are they in?”

I rolled my chair across his path.

“That’s not necessary. I have them in a box somewhere in the closet. Tell you what. You come by tomorrow and I’ll have them out to show you. We can call Sis on the phone from here. It will pave the way for your visit if I tell her you’re coming to see her.”

“Good!” Sweets rubbed his hands together. “I’ll bet little Hester is a livin’ doll.” He gave me a good view of pink gums and a tip of tongue wetting his lips.

“And, Sweets, as long as you’re coming over tomorrow, could you bring a load of wood in your pickup for my Franklin stove? Do you still have the old pickup? It’s getting toward fall and I could use some firewood.” I added, “I just got my disability check. I’d pay you well for some wood.”

He stood by the door with his hand on the knob. “Well, I don’t know. The brakes ain’t so good on the pickup.”

Sweets paused while the cold coil in my belly turned slowly.

“I guess if I’m your friend I can haul a load of wood for you. After all, we’re almost family.” The quality of reeking old motor oil was back in his voice.

“Good, then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said to his back as he walked out the door.

As soon as he was gone, I rolled down the front ramp to the sidewalk and on out to the narrow blacktop road. I live around a bend on this dead-end highway, the last house on the road the town extended a quarter of a mile some years ago to a small picnic area. It’s beside a scenic view that looks out over Heron Valley and the mountains beyond. I’m about the only person who goes there any more. Every day, weather permitting, I wheel down to the overlook, poking here and there among the grass and weeds with the stout walking stick I always carry across my lap. It’s like an extension of my arms.

The seclusion and beauty of the place have been my joy, and the exercise has given me tremendous arm and shoulder development that makes getting around in the house easy. Even swinging on the bars in the bathroom seems like play to me.

The town paved a turn-around area at the end of the road and erected posts and crossbars around it. The dropoff at the ledge is perhaps six hundred feet. It’s so abrupt no trees grow on its face to obscure the view. Grass and weeds grow in the cracks in the amesite. The wood posts are rotten at the base. They cracked ominously when I set the brakes on my wheelchair and pushed against them.

When I got back to the house I had a sandwich. A little later I drank a glass of scotch over ice before I went to bed. I slept well.

This morning I brought the bottle and a couple of glasses into the living room. I think Sweets and I should have a few drinks to celebrate our renewed friendship. Today I feel calm and at peace with my narrow world as I wait for Sweets. Surely he’ll be so happy at the prospect of seeing Hester that he won’t mind giving me a ride in his truck down to the scenic overlook where we can admire the view across Heron Valley.

While I wait, I’ve been jamming my stick against the baseboard by the front door. I’m certain it’s just the right length to reach a pickup gas pedal.