They Don’t Catch Colds in Texas

by Kyle Hemmings

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

That Saturday morning, Wendell’s father was buzzed in to the ward. He smiled at Wendell, who was waiting by the nurses’ station, his red hair slicked back and still wet from a morning shower. A nurse kindly informed Mr. Pikes that Wendell must be brought back to the floor by 8:00 pm Sunday evening. Wendell followed his father out, suppressing some kind of joy, as if possessing front row passes to a Knicks game.

They rode in a flatbed truck and Wendell tried to picture what the fields of sunflowers and young wheat had looked like during the previous summer. They drove up an endless stretch of dirt road and past a ridge where Mr. Pikes waved at the driver of a red Mustang. It was Pete Sully, owner of the town grocery and to whom Mr. Pikes sold several pounds of fresh honey every summer.

“When did they say you could come home?” asked Mr. Pikes.

“They don’t know. She told me it’s gonna take work... So is mom home?”

“She’s gone for a couple of days. She didn’t know about you comin’ home.” Mr. Pikes turned on a station playing bluegrass music.

“Don’t lie to me, Dad. She’s taken off again. Why not just say it?”

“Now don’t go losin’ your head over it. You know she ain’t right upstairs and never has been. Bonnie misses you though. She was gonna call you one night, but I told her not to bother you.” Mr. Pikes switched off the radio and turned up a long drive leading to their one story ranch house. They entered and Bonnie, standing on a foot stool by the pantry window, jumped down and ran up to her brother. She threw two scrawny arms around his waist. Her blonde hair had grown long since he last saw her over the summer.

“Wendell! Wendell! So you’re home for good, huh?”

“No. Just till tomorrow.”

“Why? You got no broken bones. Your nose looks healed. Why?”

“Bonnie,” said her father, gently nudging her, “he just can’t, that’s all.”

* * *

Groggy from the meds, Wendell napped in his bedroom. He awoke. A bird flew past the window. A white one. He entertained the notion of Albatross. But that he knew was implausible because petrels don’t fly that far inland. Not in this kind of country.

There was a knock on the door. His Dad. He apologized for interrupting, sat on the edge of the bed and handed Wendell a letter. It was from the Lindstroms whom Mr. Pikes always referred to as “the Swedes”.

The summer before last, Samuel Lindstrom and his daughter, Gertie, stayed at the Pikes’ for the entire month of July. Mr. Lindstrom was a migratory beekeeper transporting hives from crop to crop. He pollinated each farmer’s land and delivered up to forty pounds of fresh honey to their doorstep.

“There’s no such thing as pure honey,” Wendell remembered Mr. Lindstrom saying, “because bees will work with whatever they can: sunflowers, alfalfa, wheat.”

The letter said that Gertie had just graduated college and the past summer had been a particularly successful season. He was doing well now with honey selling for a dollar and a quarter per pound and their hives were being shipped to California to be cleaned. There was no mention of Gertie’s upcoming marriage. He invited the Pikes for a stay at his place in Crowfeet, Idaho.

Two summers ago, Wendell and Bonnie watched the Lindstroms don white cotton jumpers, similar to the kind fencers wear. He watched Mr. Lindstrom poke and reach in the hives, where hands were not invited. Then, he used a smoker which would disrupt the bees’ pheromones, shaking them up, chasing them away. While he rarely broke for lunch, the other three did. In the tall lush grass, Wendell enjoyed lunch from a paper plate while Bonnie chattered incessantly, scurrying back to the house for more napkins or soda. Those interludes provided Wendell with immense relief from classmates who always teased him, joked about how he spoke in a dry monotone.

He found Gertie easy to be with. There were long periods of silence where the three just sat watching the motionless tufts of grass. She was in her third year of college, she told him, a college in Austin. And it seemed strange to Wendell that even though he had never been there, he could describe its roads, its shops, its demography.

“What’s in Texas?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you miss your bees?”

“Oh, everything is in Texas,” she said while Bonnie chewed and listened. “Open skies, steer-horn cattle, miles of prairie that never quit... And yes, they have bees too in Texas, all kinds like here, queens, workers, helpers. Bees too.”

She had mentioned a fiancée from Akron. But Wendell suspected that she was lying because Akron did not lie on the meridian. And everyone had a secret lover on the meridian. Everyone had a secret lover they never talk about. And Wendell knew there were windmills in Texas she didn’t mention. There were windmills everywhere

“What’s the matter,” she said, “you’ve never been kissed by a girl?” She ran her fingers across his chest like little men with stumps for legs.

“Sure.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

“I’ve never been kissed by a girl.” He turned his face towards Bonnie who was laughing at him, spying from the tool shed. Pushing a blade of sharp grass to her teeth, Gertie espoused her theory of honey being the stuff of life itself. “Demand exceeds supply. It’s just never there when you really want it.”

Wendell lay back and massaged the back of his head against the ground. He wondered how long bees, like people, could stall off intrusion by remaining in honeycombs before their floors crumbled. He conjured an image of a honeycomb sagging in a storm, the same honeycomb repairing itself in the morning dew.

Wendell, shaking, kissed Gertie on the lips. Her hair smelled like oranges, so pungent, the kind imported from places like China or maybe farther. She said she would think about him at school. She rose, brushed herself off, and smiled down at him. “Are you walking on clouds now?” she asked. “At least tell me you are.” The sun glittered in her hair.

He said he was walking on clouds.

* * *

That Sunday afternoon, Mr. Pikes drove Wendell and Bonnie to Raynou Park, a place known to be pregnant with orange blossoms, gardens of snap dragons and black-eyed Susans. In another season. Bonnie and Wendell walked along a stone hedge fence while she snapped brittle twigs in her hands.

Wendell smelled the scent of Juniper lingering in the air and where it came from he had no clue. His father, whom Wendell occasionally glanced back at, stood against the rickety truck, smoking a cigarette, chugging down a beer. The sound of the can hitting the ground made Bonnie wince.

“Wendell, ” said Bonnie, scraping the ground with her twig, “do you remember Gertie? Her father wrote us a letter.”

“Yeah. The one who loved Texas so much.”

“Well, I was thinking. Maybe we could convince Dad to buy a farm in Texas. Because maybe what you got is a cold. And people up here are always catching colds. Dad and I would look out for you. You wouldn‘t have to go back to that hospital, if that‘s what it is.”

“What I got ain’t a cold, Bonnie.”

“No. I mean, maybe that’s all you got. The weather, Wendell, that’s what causes it. It’s different down there. They got sunshine people down there. Sunshine people never get sick. They don’t catch colds in Texas, Wendell. The weather there is like honey and it will make you smile. That’s why bees fly there. Gertie told me. And they got places with windmills that ain’t even on a map.”

Wendell squeezed together the edges of his denim jacket.

“People never smile up here. They walk around like they’re dead,” said Bonnie.

She stopped suddenly and studied Wendell’s face. “I hate the Head Mistress,” she said. She gritted her teeth and her eyes grew wild, turned a shade of darker blue.

“Bonnie,” he said, “quiet, they can hear us.”

They continued to traipse further. Bonnie announced she had to pee and it was too cold to do it in the bushes as her father would suggest. They drove back and Mr. Pikes reminded her to say good bye to her brother because he would get a head start taking him back to MacKendree Springs. Less than halfway home, Bonnie explained there was no need to head home; she said she felt a warm trickle down one leg. Her father ignored her comment.

They pulled to the front of the driveway. Bonnie refused to leave, saying she wanted to stay with Wendell at the hospital; she wanted to know just what was wrong with him. Wendell kissed her good bye; she turned her face and looked down at her sneakers. “See you, Wendell.” She opened the door and waved at him, then skittered up the driveway, tugging at the leg she had wetted.

By early evening, Wendell spotted the flat rooftops of MacKendree Springs situated high on a hill, a hard outline against the sky. The roads were becoming more tortuous and Wendell’s father downshifted into a lower gear.

He hoped to see Dr. Li, hoped she had cut short her leave of absence. He expected to be interrogated by his roommate, a young medical student who tried hanging himself at home in his bathroom. Wendell could see him sitting on his bed, asking how everything went, what Wendell did. He was up on computers and world events. Wendell wished to avoid an unbearably lengthy discussion long after the lights were turned out. They were less than a quarter mile from the front entrance gates.

“Wendell, “ Mr. Pikes said, “ I’m no one to give advice, but I don’t want you thinking about her. Your mother. What’s done is done. If I had been any kind of man, I would have thrown her out long ago.”

Wendell knew his father’s strict Methodist upbringing discouraged divorce.

“Forget it, Dad. Like you said. What’s done is done.”

“God knows I tried but she’s like a bad cold. Once you think you got rid of it — it comes back again. And when it comes back, it’s a flu or somethin’ worse. If I had known the kind of damage she would cause, I would have...”

“Dad! Please. No more. It’s done.”

“If only I had come into the house sooner that day.”

The incident Mr. Pikes referred to occurred somewhere by Wendell’s ninth year. His mother had promised to take him along shopping in town, but just when, she did not specify. Tomorrow or later or soon, she said, piling on globs of make-up. He heard a man‘s voice upstairs, figuring it was his father who had come home early from work. With fresh clothes, he waited for her downstairs on the couch. After calling out several times and hearing no response, he ran up the stairs, attempting to conquer them in sets of two, almost falling backward at one point. He whisked through his room and into his parents’. A stranger was in bed with his mother. The man jumped up, naked as a cuttlefish, and screamed through yellow-stained teeth for Wendell to leave them alone.

Wendell froze, too frozen to cry. She struck Wendell with the back of her hand, delivering a hard slap to the cheek that caused Wendell to fall back on his mother’s recliner, one with designs of sunflowers.

Mr. Pikes did return home early and said hello to his son sitting on the couch in the living room. Wendell was simulating bizarre sounds while staring past his Dad. It was not the first time, but never did Wendell imitate these grunt-like noises. These same sounds were echoing from the old pinewood ceiling. Mr. Pikes made a dash for the stairs.

Wendell rose abruptly. “No, Dad, no!”

There were similar incidents later, but Mrs. Pikes took the precaution of ordering Wendell to stay locked in a closet until she came to get him. It was a secret ritual the two kept from Mr. Pikes for years.

They drove up the long ramp leading to a visitors’ parking lot. Mr. Pikes turned off the ignition and gave his son a perfunctory hug. Wendell pulled up on the door handle and stepped out mechanically.

“And remember,” said his father, leaning over the passenger side, “ I want you home by next summer. You ain’t home; I’ll kidnap you myself.”

Trudging up the slope that led to H-3, Wendell noticed the red and orange shreds of cloud settling over the horizon. An elderly man in uniform swooped to pick up scraps of paper, cups, debris, stuffing them into a black liner. Wendell turned and noticed his father’s truck become infinitesimally smaller until it disappeared past trees.

He heard a rush of air past his ear. He looked across the far ends of the grounds. The windmill had stopped.

“You’re late,” the Voices said.

She appeared at the bottom steps. The Head Mistress. The girls soon followed, filing down the steps in neat partitions. The Voices warned Wendell to step back and not look into her eyes. Standing with feet spaced well apart, she took a deep breath, her face plastered with make-up, looked ready to crack a whip. “No. 28,” she said.

“Xyec!”

The girl, a perfect image of Wendell’s sister, moving soundless as dust, walked stiffly towards the water. Upon reaching it, she turned her face towards her brother, an eerie look of calm that shook him. “See you, Wendell,” she said.

The point on the meridian, his grandmother had told him, was called Thalessa. His grandmother loved to tell that tale passed through generations in her own family. That there were ships en route there that had capsized, destroyed by typhoons. And there were the wives, lovesick over their lost mates. They claimed they could see through the eyes of white birds.

And there was the queen of Thalessa, who weeping for her husband lost at sea was changed into a white bird herself circling over the water for her husband. Once the white bird had seen the shadow of its paired number, the spell of grief was broken, a peacefulness at that point over the meridian where the waters were calmed by the Argus of Sleep.

Sooner or later, grandmother said, everyone will circle over that point.

“Do seashells really whisper back the names of those drowned sailors, grandma?” asked Wendell.

“Yes. In fact, I used to lock your mother in a closet until she could pronounce every one of their names.”

And the thought that kings and queens, brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, could reunite at some distant point on the grid was as incredulous, as absurd, as the thought of windmills behind closets or a little boy imprisoned in them, a boy with arms growing stiff as blades, or his mother wearing her mother‘s long nightgowns, selling her body like a jar of honey to strangers. After opening the door, her arms stretched out like vanes of a windmill. They would stare at each other for seconds the distance of light years. Dumbstruck. Then she would speak.

I am the Head Mistress. I am your mother.

And not funny at all, Wendell thought.