every night, or that Debbi has to have those little ponies lined up in a row on her pillow. Also I can’t stand to thinkabout Debbi breathing all of Sue’s passive smoke. But Lord knows, Sue owes me — she stayed with us between husbands when she was so nervous. I had to wait on her hand and foot.
I’ve always been the dependable one, like furniture, like chairs. Like a La-Z-Boy recliner, and I guess you might say Billy was the original La-Z-Boy himself. I don’t mean to say that he was lazy, Billy, I mean to say that things have not worked out as he planned. He couldn’t help getting his leg hurt, he couldn’t help it that Tennessee Power and Light laid him off, or that drinking is genetic in his family, and I know he didn’t mean all those ugly things he said to me either. Billy is sweet, sweet. And handsome — Lord! I never could believe he really married me in the first place, with all the girls he had to choose from. He had the whole county to choose from.
Many is the time that I have woke up in the middle of the night with my heart just pounding, to think of it! And then I’d look over at him laying on his back with his hands folded on his belly like a dead man and that little nasal strip over his nose, which he has to use for his sleep apnea, and I’d hear his snuffly breathing, and I’d think, I am the only one who ever sees Billy Sims with his nasal strip on. Then I’d think, Billy Sims is still here in the bed with me ! After eight years of marriage! It must be a mistake. But it is not.
Was not. It was not. I’d lay there and look at him for hours, listen to him breathing, watch him sleep.
For some reason this reminds me of one time when I was a kid and we were living in that old cabin way out in the woods and I woke up real early for no good reason and walked out on the porch, it was years ago and yet I can remember it like it was yesterday. Mama and Daddy were gone. It was early, early springand rainy, a little white mist in the trees, sarvis and dogwood in bloom. The cabin was so old that the silvery boards on the porch felt smooth and almost soft to my feet. I walked out real quiet, and there he was. A twelve-point buck standing like a statue just beyond the treeline. He stared straight at me. I stopped dead still and stared back. I felt like he had been watching for me, waiting for me to come out that door. It was like he knew me. And then Sissy called “Dee Ann?” in her little baby voice from inside, and I turned my head for one split second, and when I looked back he was gone. Gone without a trace. Yet I knew he had been there, and for days afterward I felt warm inside, and special, because of it.
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’m telling you all this. “Just go on,” Lois Rubin says.
I WENT OFF TO work every morning after the accident feeling this same way, feeling special, leaving Billy asleep in the bed behind me. He got his nights and days all turned around after he got hurt. First he couldn’t get to sleep for the pain, he couldn’t get comfortable in spite of the pills. Then he got to where he was sleeping all day and staying up all night long, he’d watch videos, and why not? Poor thing. It killed me to watch him hobbling around the kitchen like a hundred-year old-man with all those pins sticking out of his leg. He was drinking too. It broke my heart.
I could never forget the way he looked running zigzag down the field at the homecoming game senior year, carrying the ball like it was a baby and then throwing it up so high in the end zone, it spun right up out of the light and was lost for good in the sky. That was the winning run.
I saw the whole thing from the student government concession stand where I was making hamburgers and sloppy joes, serving a man who got so excited by Billy’s run that he took off toward the field forgetting his change and his fries. Football is real big here. It always has been. And now that they’ve closed the Piney Creek mine as well as the Resolute
I’ve always been the dependable one, like furniture, like chairs. Like a La-Z-Boy recliner, and I guess you might say Billy was the original La-Z-Boy himself. I don’t mean to say that he was lazy, Billy, I mean to say that things have not worked out as he planned. He couldn’t help getting his leg hurt, he couldn’t help it that Tennessee Power and Light laid him off, or that drinking is genetic in his family, and I know he didn’t mean all those ugly things he said to me either. Billy is sweet, sweet. And handsome — Lord! I never could believe he really married me in the first place, with all the girls he had to choose from. He had the whole county to choose from.
Many is the time that I have woke up in the middle of the night with my heart just pounding, to think of it! And then I’d look over at him laying on his back with his hands folded on his belly like a dead man and that little nasal strip over his nose, which he has to use for his sleep apnea, and I’d hear his snuffly breathing, and I’d think, I am the only one who ever sees Billy Sims with his nasal strip on. Then I’d think, Billy Sims is still here in the bed with me ! After eight years of marriage! It must be a mistake. But it is not.
Was not. It was not. I’d lay there and look at him for hours, listen to him breathing, watch him sleep.
For some reason this reminds me of one time when I was a kid and we were living in that old cabin way out in the woods and I woke up real early for no good reason and walked out on the porch, it was years ago and yet I can remember it like it was yesterday. Mama and Daddy were gone. It was early, early springand rainy, a little white mist in the trees, sarvis and dogwood in bloom. The cabin was so old that the silvery boards on the porch felt smooth and almost soft to my feet. I walked out real quiet, and there he was. A twelve-point buck standing like a statue just beyond the treeline. He stared straight at me. I stopped dead still and stared back. I felt like he had been watching for me, waiting for me to come out that door. It was like he knew me. And then Sissy called “Dee Ann?” in her little baby voice from inside, and I turned my head for one split second, and when I looked back he was gone. Gone without a trace. Yet I knew he had been there, and for days afterward I felt warm inside, and special, because of it.
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’m telling you all this. “Just go on,” Lois Rubin says.
I WENT OFF TO work every morning after the accident feeling this same way, feeling special, leaving Billy asleep in the bed behind me. He got his nights and days all turned around after he got hurt. First he couldn’t get to sleep for the pain, he couldn’t get comfortable in spite of the pills. Then he got to where he was sleeping all day and staying up all night long, he’d watch videos, and why not? Poor thing. It killed me to watch him hobbling around the kitchen like a hundred-year old-man with all those pins sticking out of his leg. He was drinking too. It broke my heart.
I could never forget the way he looked running zigzag down the field at the homecoming game senior year, carrying the ball like it was a baby and then throwing it up so high in the end zone, it spun right up out of the light and was lost for good in the sky. That was the winning run.
I saw the whole thing from the student government concession stand where I was making hamburgers and sloppy joes, serving a man who got so excited by Billy’s run that he took off toward the field forgetting his change and his fries. Football is real big here. It always has been. And now that they’ve closed the Piney Creek mine as well as the Resolute
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