Long, lazy days, humidity potent enough to coat Russ Hayworth's cheeks with moisture and stunt the air in his nostrils, the shimmering light that chased the sloping hill from his front lawn over to the Jensen's farm -- these things spelled Summer, each and every Summer since he'd married Lucy 56 years ago. Sweat zig-zagged down the hair on the back of his neck, wet his old white t-shirt and caked his belted waist. Everything was familiar to him in the here and now, but once he walked up that hill, the year would be 2012, not 1958, and he'd be 76 years old, not 22.
It wasn't like he felt 22, not here, not in many a year had he felt that kind of energy. He remembered those days. He might forget what year his son got married or where to put a certain dish after it was washed, but the older he got and the fuzzier the present seemed, the more in focus the old days became.
He'd been strong and healthy once. If someone needed a hefty piece of furniture moved, he was one of the first to be asked. He remembered when Paul Harriet asked him after he married the California girl -- Paul's first wedding. Russ was best man, and that was an honor, back in those days, because you didn't get married six times. Paul wasn't more than a string bean in those days, and he asked for help in between cigarette puffs at Edgar's Bar & Grill. "Ya think you could help me with this fuckin' couch? It's a sectional but this one section, oh my man, it's downright evil."
"Hell yes," Russ said. Paul was his best friend back then, and that's what you did for your best friend -- you said "hell yes" first and asked questions later. And that was exactly what Russ did, and that weekend he helped them move. That damn sectional was about as heavy as a refrigerator but twice as unwieldy, particularly when squeezing it up two flights of stairs to Paul's apartment, yelling at one another to go faster and then slower, and bumping their hands against the walls.
Such a mess it was, and that day seemed to go on forever, but they got it up there with only a couple knicks taken out of the doorway. After, they went down to Edgar's for a drink and stayed there all night, babbling about all their plans: where life had been and where it was going to go, because dammit they were young and they were going to shape their destinies the way they saw fit. Eventually their shoulders and backs started hurting as the adrenalin of the lift wore off, and they went their separate ways.
Looking at the whole ordeal in retrospect, it didn't matter a whit because within a day or two the soreness in Russ' back disappeared, the hangover lifted and life carried on its way, turning corners on its own with no concern for what Russ had in his plans.
Didn't matter. Russ and Lucy still had time, it was just a matter of trying harder to make fate do what they wanted it to. Russ took it all for granted back then, what he had, and then he'd proceeded to ruin it all by always trying to be somewhere else. It was always work, or planning for more, waiting for checks because when you had money, that was when you could live.
Russ wished he had a time machine, because if he did, he'd take a trip back to that year in 1960 or whatever it was, and go see himself. He'd take that boy -- he'd thought himself at the time a man, but he wasn't, he was still a boy -- he'd take him by the shoulders, shake some sense into him, and scream in his face: appreciate what you got, man, because it's not here forever.
But it feels like forever, his younger self would say.
Funny thing: whenever he performed this creative exercise, he could never quite see himself clearly. He remembered, basically, what he'd looked like back then, he'd seen the pictures and after all, he'd looked into the mirror enough times over the years, but the memory of his own face was so elusive, always in motion such that whenever he tried to freeze frame it, the result was too blurry to see much of interest.
Russ sucked on his cigarette, standing at the front entrance to his home, the door and screen wide open so the air could steal away through what little hair remained on his head. It was hot, but here in the shade it was nothing compared to the shimmery heat on the hill. Jensen's farm was right on the other side.
Wasn't that far. He could make it there and back. He wasn't a damn cripple.
If he were younger, it'd be no big to-do. He'd walk with that gait that caught Lucy's interest back at the Poplar Grove pumpkin patch all those years ago, that John Wayne walk he'd picked up on naturally, and maybe his calves'd burn just a little bit but it wouldn't matter because soon as he crested that hill, it'd all be descent and it'd be easy, heat or no heat. Tired muscles or no tired muscles.
Tired muscles? He'd never known what tired meant 'til after 50 waved bye bye. Paul was at that birthday party, and he gave him probably the most hurtful card Russ had ever received. "Over the Hill," the card read. All meant in good humor, no question, but it hurt all the same. It didn't help that he had just had the colonoscopy and was waiting to hear the results, and he was already on medication for his overactive thyroid. The weight wasn't dropping off him like water anymore and it was harder to get all those muscles working, even enough to get out of bed in the morning. Of course, back then it was 1986, and medicine wasn't what it became in the new millennium.
And Paul, he'd actually come down with something, Russ had forgot what, from a Rock Cut Park tick, on the far northeast side of town.
Town? Back when he was young, there wasn't anything but park out near Rock Cut. Now, there were businesses aplenty and even residences bordering the goddamn thing.
Times changed, that's for sure.
Paul understood though. He knew exactly what it was like, getting older, even with his "Over the Hill" cards and his fancy new car bought five months before because he was a fancy car salesman, more worldly as the years went by and he threw his money around.
That had never been Russ's style. He was a homebody, and happily so. The world might've kept on turning, but in his house, he was happy with his 19 inch TV, the same rugs in the house as he'd had when he raised Sam, his first child. Matter of fact, only thing that had changed in that house was the furnace, which he'd replaced back in 2003, and what an ordeal that was. Took three visits for the technician to finally install the new unit, and then it turned out there was a problem with the thermostat.
What was wrong with the damn thermostat? It only happened 9 years ago, he really should've remembered, but he couldn't put a finger on it. "Fuck it," he grumbled under his breath.
Jensen's farm was right over the hill. Wasn't really that far away at all, come to think of it. At age 76, 86, or 106, Russ was tough enough to make it. Didn't take a goddamn He-Man to walk fifty yards, hill or no hill, heat or no heat.
"Fuck it," he said again, and this time plucked his cigarette from his mouth.
Lucy's voice popped up from the kitchen. "Honey? Where are you going?"
He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray on a square porch table. "Jensen's place."
"You're taking the truck, right?" He didn't respond because he didn't want to lie. Then he'd get that knot in his stomach to bug him all night. "You know what the doctor said."
Russ grunted. "Yeah, I hear you." He exited the house and shut the door behind him.
He walked past the truck, which was aging far worse than Russ was, and the damn thing had been born only ten years ago. He'd fixed it whenever he could afford it, which wasn't too often anymore now that he was relying on those government checks. Pretty much his whole income could dry up any day now, and then he'd really be up a creek.
But that was a thought for another day.
He kept walking. The heat leaned on his shoulders, sweat instantly wetting his shirt. The sunlight was so bright that it buzzed. His throat dried up, and he was left with the taste of his cigarettes and the milk and sandwich he'd had for lunch. Grass and dirt crunched under his slippers. His slippers?
"Goddammit," he muttered. "Shoulda put on my shoes first."
But if he'd done that, he'd have lost his nerve.
He ignored the slippers, and kept his back as straight as it would go since the curvature kicked in. Jensen's farm. He willed himself to think of Jensen's farm only, and throw out all thoughts otherwise.
But the thoughts wouldn't all go away. There was Paul in his mind's eye, suffering from his tick problem. He'd recovered for a while, but he remembered having his sit down with Paul after he'd gone to the wheelchair. The disease the tick had transmitted left permanent side effects, and Paul couldn't do much but talk after that.
The wind had gone from the man's sails, and Russ remembered sitting there with him, the first visit since Paul had come back from the doctor with the news that the paralysis was permanent. He'd never move from the waist down again.
"I'm dead, Russ," Paul had said, his voice eaten up like moths had taken to it. "This is it. I'm dead."
"No you ain't. You're strong, Paul. You're gettin' better every day. That's what the docs say."
"Oh?" Paul said, and by the look in his eyes, Russ could tell his bluff had been called. "Funny they don't tell me 'bout that."
"You're still here though, so you ain't dead. Wendy -- " -- who was Paul's third wife, married six years by this point -- " -- is still here, too, and she's gonna need you, you hear me?"
Paul closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and didn't say a word. He wasn't listening, Russ knew that. As far as Paul was concerned, his body was dead, and that was that.
Russ wasn't a big believer in the spiritual side of things, but even he knew that if you believed you were something, then you were, in a sense of things. And Paul was. That was when the card came, the "Over the Hill" card. Paul had Wendy push his wheelchair all the way up and down that hill -- the same hill Russ was walking now, because Paul and Wendy used to live where Jensen and his brood lived now.
They'd moved there in 1980, right after they got married. What fun it'd be, it'd like old times, Paul had said. All the old cliches applied, and they lived 'em for a time, and it was all well and grand.
And then the tick came, and then the paralysis, and Paul wasn't a man anymore, he was a slab of meat with an empty stare.
Russ stopped walking. The sun was on him pretty fierce now, and his fatigue caught up with him. He bent down, palms on his knees and gathered his breath. The humidity was enough that even dogs knew better than try to travel today.
No doubt the dogs would be laying down in the shade, tongues lolling out the side of their mouths, kind of like what he was doing now, but they probably wouldn't have the pounding of their hearts in their ears like he did, thumping erratic and painful like horses racing out of pace with each other.
The heat torched the top of his head, and he contemplated going back to the house and giving up. Not permanently, he assured himself. Just so he could go back and get his hat.
He knew deep down that if he returned to the shade of his living room and his recliner was right there, he'd sit down and not get up until dinner time.
This break was enough to allow his breath time to collect until it finally fell back into a regular rhythm. The heat was still just as unforgiving, and his head burned and his forearms burned and everything burned; he'd turned whiter as he aged, not just his hair but his whole body. He spent more and more time indoors, nursing his growing gut and trying to manufacture ways to keep his clothes big enough to fit without actually having to venture out of the house to buy new ones.
A lot of people thought that was weird. Sam was among that crowd. "Get out. Take Mom out for a movie, or go out to dinner. Do something."
Yeah, I'd love to, Russ thought. You don't know what it's like, Sammy boy. Got not a clue.
Sam was almost 40 now, but damn that boy had a lot to learn. 40 was still young, you could still accomplish all those physical things you took for granted when you were 20. It just hurt more to do it, that was all. But after 50, maybe 55 if you were lucky, it got harder and harder to do everything. And when you were 76, just walking became something to think about and take seriously.
Russ couldn't help but take it seriously. Paul lost his ability to walk, and he never got it back. The hot shot salesman shrank into a damn quadripelegic in a matter of weeks. But life was funny like that, sometimes things just seemed to coincide, like there was some cosmic reason for everything to be just the way it was.
It was four weeks after the birthday party, the "Over the Hill" card tidily disposed of and sent off to its own landfill paradise, but never forgotten because of Paul, because of his eyes, and all that was gone from them, the fun, the wit, the charm, everything that used to be Paul.
That night, there was a nasty bit of squall that washed in from Iowa and nailed Rockford right between its screw manufacturing eyes. He remembered that night, because there were rumors of there being tornados spotted, or funnel clouds, or whatever they called 'em now when they were tornados but they really weren't.
The sky was roiling black, and the wind wheezed through the trees and the corn fields and sucked in the windowblinds as the storm drew strength from the air itself. Out here in the country, you could see for miles, and the storms were always pretty amazing to watch. But this one was different, because the rain fell in sheets and it traveled with the wind, slamming wave after wave of water into the cracks of his windows and sent oceans out his downspouts and pooled in his basement.
Remembering that night was enough to get Russ walking again. He forced one foot in front of the other, one at a time, his leg muscles threatening to seize up any moment, but he still carried on. He was Russ Hayworth, goddammit, he still was, he was big and strong and handsome and if someone fucked with him, he set them straight and if a tussle had to happen, then he'd go round with whoever the unlucky guy was. He lost sometimes, sure, but he won sometimes too, and the winning made all the losing worthwhile.
But that night back in 1986, the storms rolled in and the rain, lightning and wind melted the world like a watercolor painter with a bad temper. Russ got the phone call from Wendy, who was increasingly worried about Paul and his psyche.
"Can you come over? Say, at 8? Maybe you can talk some sense into him."
"Hell yes," Russ said, because Paul was his best friend and that's what you said when your best friend needed help, or even just somebody to talk to.
He told Lucy he was going to head out after dinner, and she nodded like she always did, but she wondered, and he guessed he couldn't blame her. Wasn't a secret that Wendy had eyes for Russ too, and it probably hadn't done anything but got worse because of Paul's issues. But he and Lucy had an understanding, and he swore to her this was only to see Paul, and that was it, and he'd be right back, and Lucy said OK, just like she always did. Wasn't easy to come by, trust, not even in marriage, but they did it. No one Russ knew would ever have pegged their marriage as being one to stick -- a banker's daughter and a farmer? "It'll never work," his own dad told him.
They'd proved every last one of the naysayers wrong.
So Lucy let him leave, and the rest was history. He raced through the pitch black night and it felt like running straight through a waterfall. The darkness was punctuated with brief flashes of strong lightning, and Russ couldn't help but flinch as the air around him grew ever more electric.
He might have been over 50, but he made pretty good time to Paul's house, and stomped up the porch steps to the front door.
Wendy had waited for him. She opened the door, welcomed Russ into the house and took his soaked jacket. He couldn't help but notice the makeup painting her face, obviously applied in a hurry. Her perfume was strong enough to kill a moose. He ignored it and asked after Paul. "There's something wrong. He is so miserable, and he won't listen to me," she told Russ.
"Lemme talk to him," Russ said. "I'll smack some sense into him."
This seemed to satisfy Wendy, who then brought him to Paul's bedside. His old friend was dressed in his pajamas, no doubt with his wife's help.
Russ waited for her to leave the room, and then shut the door behind her. He turned back to Paul, and made eye contact.
That was the beginning of the end right there. Russ should've known it.
Russ' mouth turned downward instantly as he reached the hill. He focused his effort on making his legs move. The incline was punishing on every muscle in his legs, and his heart trembled again, but he pushed himself onward. He grunted with effort. His knees popped.
Before he knew it, he wasn't aware of the trudging progress of his walk, because he was back in his head to that stormy night, standing by his friend Paul's bed.
You called, and here I am," Russ said.
Paul offered the tiniest of smiles, but one side of his mouth looked half numb, and his eyes were watery with either emotion or some kind of film, Russ couldn't tell. "You always do." His voice was so weak it was barely audible.
"I do, come to that." Russ folded his arms.
"I appreciate it. I can't even begin to say how much.
"It's nothing." Russ was never good at being mushy, nor did he desire to be. "What is it you need?"
"You're my best friend." Paul chuckled softly. "Couldn't ask anybody else, not a soul's to know 'bout what you and I are going to talk about, you understand?"
Russ narrowed his eyes. "What's this about?"
Paul paused, gathering his resolve to say whatever he was about to say. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His eyes closed halfway. "I'm ready to go," Paul said.
"No you ain't."
"I am," Paul insisted. "Listen to me. Wendy has to do everything for me. Thank God I have her, 'cuz I'd already be six feet under if I didn't. She dresses me. She feeds me. She waits on me hand to foot." He grunted, the frustration pouring out of his eyes as sudden tears. He blinked. "Could you -- could you please wipe my eyes for me," Paul said.
That tiny request was enough to break a man's heart, and Russ might have been tough but he wasn't stone.
"There's a towel on the desk."
There was indeed a towel on the writing desk that Paul had for the past eight years used daily to work on his sales scripts. Russ dabbed the soft material against Paul's cheeks and eyes, until his friend told him it was enough. He set the towel beside Paul's pillow
"Wendy wouldn't want it any other way. You know that."
"I know that," Paul said. "And I know she's a sweet girl, oh my man, sweetest in the world, sweeter by far than my other wives." He paused for a moment. "That's why I gotta get her out of here."
"Don't say this is about her," Russ said. "And don't you dare ask me to be a party to any kind of crazy talk, you hear? I won't stand for it."
"This is for her," Paul insisted. "She's trapped here, taking care of me. She's got no life. She can't have a life, if she's taking care of me. And how long do I have, anyway? Maybe another week? Maybe ten more years?" He waited for Russ to comment, and when there was no response, he carried on. "We're in our 50's now, Russ. We're not getting any younger, OK? She's only got so long to be happy."
Russ said nothing, but his mouth became a tight line.
"But when I go, she's going to lose my disability benefits," Paul said. "I can't risk that. Not for her. She deserves every fucking penny the government can spare."
"Yeah, would be kinda shitty of you to leave her high and dry, wouldn't it?"
Paul said nothing to that barbed comment, but carried on, talking faster now. "That's why I need your help. No one's ever going to know if I die or not, because I'm bedbound anyway. I need you to bury me out back, just before the hill, where the old tree was, and then swear to anyone who comes by that I'm still alive and kicking, just sent somewhere else to be taken care of, in the event that somebody gets into the house." He stared at Russ, and for a second, a flicker of lightning appeared behind those eyes, and Russ spotted it. This was Paul, this was him, plotting and planning and desperate for a helping hand.
Russ said nothing.
"I need your help," Paul said. Then, more desperately: "Please to God, man, you've got to help me." He shook his head left and right, and his shoulders budged just the slightest. The eye wiping towel fell to the ground beside the bed. "You've got to help me get out."
The hill finally came to its end, and Russ gasped for air, but he made it. He stopped there, legs wobbling and threatening to give way. A sense of triumph came over him: he'd made it! He'd reached the top of the hill, heat or no heat, youth or no youth, and now here he was, and his destination was so very close.
There wasn't much stomp left in him, so he continued his determined trudge, his shirt clinging to him like glue and looking less white and more like the moist gray of saturated fabric. His mouth was full of cotton and his throat opened and closed, angry and sore.
It didn't take him long to find the spot -- he'd retraced it many times in his dreams over the years: it was to be Paul Harriet's final resting place.
He came to a stop a few feet away. There used to be an enormous oak tree here that shaded the east side of the house, but Paul and Wendy had it torn down, and the ground had sunk from the whole tree being excavated. There it was, that was the hole. He could've dug that hole in a couple hours.
It shouldn't have been a big deal at all.
Russ remembered, all those years ago, bringing Wendy to the house he shared with Lucy, how they'd all sat down and chatted about anything and everything, the little things, and the frustrations of dealing with a ruined man who knew his life was behind him. Through it all, her love shined. Paul was her knight in shining armor, she said -- another cliche, but damn if they didn't ring true sometimes. Her previous husband had beaten her bad, caused her to miscarry, and the damage done to her had rendered her unable to carry a child.
But Paul hadn't minded, not in the least; he'd had his kids with his previous wives -- two girls -- and that had been enough for him. He hardly knew them at all; when there's money to be made and plenty of vacation days to spend, time had a way of speeding up. Suddenly, his girls were all grown up and moved out of state. But Paul hardly noticed or if he did, he never mentioned it.
Russ had his share of money problems, but none of that mattered in the long haul. Money spent, or money never had, what was the difference when it was all in the past? Being there for his family was all that ever really mattered for Russ. In that regard, Paul had failed miserably. But Paul saved Wendy, that was certain -- and now he was about to tank her with his death.
When the conversation started dying out and they'd all had a little bit to drink, Russ walked her home, just as he told Paul he would. That was the longest walk he'd ever taken. He kept thinking about the pills, all those pills he'd dropped into Paul's eager mouth, and then the glass of water that spilled onto the man's blanket so Russ had to get a second glass to finish the job.
And then Russ, with his soft "thank you" and his eyes, which followed Russ out the door.
Now, returning to the house with Wendy in tow, he felt scared and sick. Just knowing what was waiting for them on the other end -- or maybe not knowing was the problem. How would Paul look? Would he even be dead, or just terribly sick?
The pouring rain subsided temporarily but the wind, lightning and thunder kept pounding the landscape as they reached the porch. Wendy opened the door and let Russ come in to get out of the rain for a while.
Wendy went into the bedroom while Russ waited in the living room, and he heard her cheerfully say Paul's name a couple times. Then there was a pause, the sound of the light fixture turning on, she screamed, and then the scream turned into a low wail.
Russ ran into the room. Paul's body was indeed still, but somehow it had contorted in the bed and his arm dangled over the side. His best friend's mouth was bloody and his tongue lolled out of his mouth like a dog locked outside in a heat wave.
No matter how many times he saw death happen -- and he'd seen it happen to his aunt, two cousins, and his mother and father -- it never got any easier, and this was no exception. Paul's eyes were wide open, and it seemed to Russ that they were glaring at him, and he imagined Paul's voice in his head: "Tell her! Tell her like we talked about!"
And Russ found he didn't want to be a part of this lie anymore. He forced himself to break his gaze with the corpse, and took a deep breath to quiet the rattling of his heart. A terrible knot began to tie itself tight in his gut, as though his entire being was being sucked inward, and he clung to the wall to make sure he wouldn't somehow implode.
Wendy's screaming continued, a desperate and utterly hurt sound, like a tortured animal.
This moment never left Russ. Didn't matter how many years passed -- in some private corner of his mind, the memory played on an infinite loop.
He said nothing, and left.
Russ had never been a coward before, and he swore to himself he'd never be one after, but that night the fear got the best of him. He said nothing on the walk back, nothing when Lucy asked him what happened when he returned home and sat heavily in his recliner. Lucy pressed him, because she was a good woman, but she figured out he didn't want to tell her, so she let it go.
Russ hadn't killed a man since Korea, and even then he'd had a gun and some distance. The fact that Paul had wanted to die, and that it was his idea, was lost on Russ. Still, he'd put the pills in the man's mouth.
Lucy went to bed, but Russ remained in his chair, head in his hands.
The police came and questioned him, and rather than lie, he put a spin on the story he told: that Paul asked him to give him his medicine, and must've told him to give him too much. Wendy corroborated the fact that Paul was suicidal, and there was no evidence to say otherwise.
Life moved on, he supposed, for everyone else anyway. Wendy moved in with her brother in Oklahoma, and that was the last he'd heard. Her house stood empty for five years after that, wallowing in foreclosure, and then the Jensens bought it up.
As for Russ, he still saw Paul every now and then in dreams, heard him ask for a favor as he often did, to which Russ of course said "hell yes" like he always did, and then the guilt hammered him again and he felt like his guts would drop from his stomach into his shoes.
So many years had passed, but here, a few feet from his slippers, was where Paul Harriet's grave was supposed to be.
The fatigue from the long uphill walk through the heat caught up with him, and he thought about turning back. He looked back and saw his house, barely visible beyond the hill. Lucy was probably fixing dinner or watching TV and waiting for him. She really was a wonderful girl, always had been, and he was lucky to have her.
But the walk back home was far too long to contemplate, at least for now. And in any case, he'd finally left the house and walked -- actually walked -- and he felt a certain triumph, that he'd faced those awful memories, the reason for his self-imposed exile, and won. The knot in his stomach unravelled, and with that release of tension went any remaining strength he had. His legs buckled. Standing was no longer an option.
He eased himself down, his back crackling, fully aware it'd be a bitch to get back up again, and sat carefully in the dirt. His heart hammered.
The heat sang around him. His shirt stank of perspiration, and his back really did ache, as did his legs. He leaned back until he was laying down, and though it was far from comfortable at first, after a while it was.
Russ Hayworth ignored the heat and the sound of blood pounding in his ears and closed his eyes. He felt his breath return and his temperature stabilize. Despite the punishment he had put on his old muscles, each strain relented as the minutes passed by.
He might have been exhausted, but Russ refused to be downed by this, because for all the trouble it had been to get here, this moment was his, and it was a good thing too because at his age, he wasn't going to be around much longer.
But laying there in the blissful sun, the time he had left felt like forever.
