Nebraska: A Novel

1956

YOU WOULD NEVER LISTEN to me and now look what’s happened! Mama fainted dead away. The next thing I knew, I woke up with my leg gone.

She meant I would refuse to walk when I could run. I would not look both ways before I crossed the street. I would forget and have to be sent back to the store when it was already dark.

I felt sorry for the man who hit me. When they put me in the ambulance, he was sitting there on the curb, an honest working man in coveralls.

I would run. I ran blind—I was twelve years old but more a baby. In my imagination, there were worse things along that stretch of road than getting hit.

What is wrong with you?

I was a case, that’s for sure. My arm was broke. The skin was off whole parts of me. I had stitches I didn’t even know about. When my sisters came to see me they both cried out.

I had two doctors. The first one said That child keeps wetting the bed his stump will never heal. The other said Sure you can take him home but how will you take care of him?

Mama said We will take good care of him. He is the only one we have.

I was in and out. I lost whole days. I heard Mama saying We’re going to be paying off the bills for the rest of our lives.

I tried to think how I could help. I heard her say Now I guess we won’t have to buy that bike. I cried because I could not have my paper route now.

When I was in the hospital, I was like the lady in the magician’s box, who must smile and smile as the blades get slipped into her. When I came home, Mama tried to keep this torture up as they had told her to. However I begged, Mama would poke and prod. Mama would flip-flop me morning and night. Mama wore herself clean out with tormenting.

When I was in the hospital, I heard the nurses say about a little girl who died Do you know what they said? They opened up that little tyke and found such a tumor there she must have been in terrible pain all her life. But you see she didn’t never know it. She must of thought This is just life.

I lay there thinking To be in terrible pain and not know it because it was all you ever knew. And maybe this is true. Maybe you just don’t know it. Maybe if you’re lucky you get numb, for all I know is, after a while that chawed up lost leg was all I felt—even if it was buried somewhere in some city dump, that lost leg was more real than my real body. Answer when I’m talking! Mama yelled at me but I was deaf and dumb. At night I turned that lost leg over and over and over like a new limb held in my hands and after a while there wasn’t anything they could do to me that hurt anymore.

Mama was wore out. She worked all day at Monkey Wards. She waited on tables on the top floor. I liked it there because you could sit on that balcony and watch all the shoppers far below crowding up against the counters.

I lived with Mama, Betty and Dolores in a half house—each step on the stairway there was supposedly the same as the one next door. We rented our half longer than anyone else.

When I came home from the hospital it was summer already. Mama had a real hospital bed waiting for me out on the sleeping porch—they could not get it up the stairs. She made Betty and Dolores wait on me. I thought Mama was so wonderful.

This sleeping porch was on the side of the house and lilac bushes screened it from the street. In early summer those blossoms hung off every branch like big bunches of grapes but through the chinks in the bushes I could see people passing by.

Most days the only sign of life all day was a sprinkler on the lawn across the street but every day at four the paperboy who got my route would come whooshing by, pumping hard.

I watched TV and did my puzzle books—I was a puzzle freak and went through dozens of those books each week. I even had made up puzzles myself. This was my only talent and had once got me in the paper.

They came out and took my picture. They printed it in the paper over the caption

Boy Puzzle Whiz

But now the neighbors did not go by our house and say as I hoped they would That’s the house where the puzzle whiz lives. They said Look at that yard, it’s disgraceful, it’s all dirt.

When I got my cast off, they told Mama I was not yet to go to physical therapy in spite of all they had promised. Sometimes my pee was still pink. I lived in fear.

Get ready to die, Dolores said setting down my lunch.

One day in the middle of that summer, Mama came to me with something in her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

I found this in the hamper when I was sorting the wash, Mama said, letting my handkerchief uncrumple. I know boys have urges, she said, that are mostly natural.

I thought of lying and saying I just blew my nose in it.

She held the handkerchief up. I don’t want to see this ever again, understand?

I did. I nodded. But a door closed in me. Mama had shut it.

I was, you see, the only male in that household until Uncle Wayne came home.

For all my childhood it seemed Uncle Wayne was a sailor. He was away in the navy so long I didn’t know what he looked like anymore.

We all worshipped Uncle Wayne the way you worship movie stars. A postcard from Uncle Wayne was a holy relic. We all awaited news from him.

When I had my accident, a package arrived for me from Honolulu. In it was a plastic ukulele. You could strum on the strings or play it with a crank. It played Lovely Hula Hands.

So all my childhood Uncle Wayne was sailing around the world from one dangerous port to another. I found out later of course he had not been so close to combat, only dispatched some fighters into the war zone, but when Uncle Wayne came home he might as well have been the greatest hero.

When Uncle Wayne came home he came up to my bed and stood there grinning and said What the hell happened to you, Skeezix? The first thing you noticed was the ring on his little finger. It was a diamond engagement ring. Betty perched on the arm of his chair and picked up his hand.

What’s this, Uncle Wayne?

This here, Betty, was recently returned to me by a young lady in San Diego.

Oh Uncle Wayne, you mean you was engaged?

For a brief while there I was, kiddo.

But when he came downstairs later it was gone.

Women made a terrible fuss over him. Aunt Eileen almost peed her pants to see her baby brother when he walked in the door. He tossed down his white duffle bag and the girls were jumping up and down but Mama stayed in the kitchen frying chicken and he had to go in after her. She was crying too.

That night we had a picnic in our back yard. Wayne carried me out and laid me on the air mattress to Dad’s old sleeping bag. We ate chicken and potato salad and watermelon. By the time we finished eating it was dark. But we stayed out there talking and laughing at Uncle Wayne’s jokes—I thought he was so funny. There was just the sink light on in the house and a blue glow from the TV next door where you could hear the sound of laughter from New York.

It was so hot. Everyone agreed it was a real Nebraska summer to welcome Wayne home.

Everyone was amazed how fast the plane had brought him home.

I bet you ain’t even lost your sea-legs, Uncle Sparky said. Those ships are just like floating cities, ain’t they? he said.

Sure are, said Uncle Wayne.

What was your ship called, Uncle Wayne?

My ship was the Alameda.

Will you miss the Alameda, Uncle Wayne?

Why, hell’s bells, honey. The Alameda was my whole life.

But now he announced he was going away again soon to open up his new garage in California. He was going to be a partner with his shipboard pal the Chief. We all yelled No, but he held his hands up and said California is the place.

Then at that very moment the phone rang long distance. Uncle Wayne bounded up the stairs.

It was so hot the birds hung like they were dead in the trees. We were all silent. We didn’t have anything to say to each other. We could hear Uncle Wayne on the phone.

No, I’m sorry, Miss, he said, Mr. Wayne Smith is not here.

Then he came out back and said that was all arranged ahead of time so the Chief could call person to person and know he was home safe but not have to pay for the call.

By the time Eileen stood up and dusted off her skirt telling Sparky they must go home, so many empty beer bottles lined those back steps it looked like you could walk up into the house on them.

Mama went inside and washed up the pots and pans Betty and Dolores had conveniently forgot. Dolores went up to set her hair. Betty sat there next to Uncle Wayne on the blanket with her head on his shoulder like he was her drive-in dream date.

Why can’t you stay in Nebraska forever, Uncle Wayne?

Well soon you can visit me, can’t you? Wouldn’t you like to take a bus all the way across the U.S.?

Only if it was to see you.

She gets car sick, I said.

Uncle Wayne stroked her cheek.

The porch light came on and Mama, moths around her head, said it was time for bed. So Uncle Wayne picked me up in his arms and carried me inside.

Uncle Wayne smelled of sweat and whiskey and beers and Camels—Grandma once said How bad Grandpa’s long-johns stink from his chewing tobacco when I put them through the mangle!

Before I went to sleep, Mama gave me a sponge bath and bandaged the stump as you must do.

Will Uncle Wayne live in his own house in California? I asked her.

Where else would he live?

Will he own a convertible?

He’d like to I bet.

Will he have a swimming pool?

We learned about the Chief. First of all he was Uncle Wayne’s best friend and also his chief petty officer. Second, the nickname Uncle Wayne gave him on the Alameda, the Shadow, was given him for being a great practical joker. The Chief came from Chula Vista, a town near Mexico, and had a legendary capacity for booze. According to Uncle Wayne, the Chief was going to borrow money from his brother-in-law to open up that garage.

Uncle Wayne spoke of his plans at the breakfast table. Mama was upset for he was her nearest and dearest and had been away so long. This is so fast, she said. Why can’t you boys open up a garage here in Lincoln?

Because the Chief’s out on the Coast, Sis.

But why can’t he come here?

Because all his connections is out there, you see.

Mama shook her head. You go out there and I’m afraid you will never come back home.

Sure I will.

And what about our Dad?

She did not mention Grandma. Uncle Wayne had really come home to Mama because she was the only one who was once a real mother to him.

Grandpa worked on the railroad so all their married life, Grandpa and Grandma were never out of earshot of it. Grandma said when Mama was little they lived in a house so close to the tracks she kept the front door locked and hid the key—she was afraid one of the kids would fall off the porch in front of the train.

They lived in Warren some thirty miles from us. Their house there was for once only on a spur of the railroad so freight cars came by only once or twice a day, but at night the lights of every