Daniel Delehant

Uncle Joe (Buffalo and T or C)

Uncle Joe was in the hospital bed dying. It wasn’t right. Peripatetic wanderer that he had been, he should have died anywhere but in an antiseptic hospital bed. My Uncle Joe, the Bible-toting, newspaper-reading, booze-dependent old hobo, was lying there, on the precipice of eternity or oblivion, and gasping his penultimate breath. On the table beside his last bed sat a newspaper and his ancient, motel-acquired, dog-eared, coffee, and whiskey-stained King James.

“All I need,” Uncle Joe told me many years ago, “is the day’s newspaper and my Bible. I don’t believe everything that is in either one, but they taught me to read and they both keep me entertained and a-feared of God.”

As I grew older and gleaned a suspect education of my own, I came to understand that Uncle Joe was sort of a newspaper-reading, Bible-wielding, always-out-of-work, alcoholic, low-grade autodidact. He was forever babbling on about some character from the Bible or out of the comics, or he’d be recounting some clever or horrific crime he’d read about. He would show up now and again on Sunday afternoons and weasel a meal out of my mom and dad. After dinner we’d all go into the living room where Uncle Joe would light up one of my dad’s half-expensive cigars, pour himself a tall glass of Bushmills Irish Whiskey (that my mom always kept on hand for Uncle Joe’s visits) and proceed to read us kids stories out of the Bible. I still recall many of the stories. Some, like old bald Elisha and the she-bears, made me laugh, while others, like Malachi and Revelations, scared me so much that I’d have nightmares.

Uncle Joe was a bum. He despised work and devoted himself to avoiding it. My mom said that Uncle Joe worked very hard at not working. He was actually my dad’s uncle, and my dad, I suspect, was ashamed of him, but out of familial duty, I guess, put up with him. My mom, however, loved Uncle Joe. She doted over him like he was one of us—one of her kids. For my mom, Uncle Joe, old man that he was, was just another one of my half-a-horde of siblings. When he came by on one of his frequent visits, my brother and I would relinquish our bedroom to the white-bearded old guy and sleep out on the porch if it were summer, or in the basement if it was wintertime. We weren’t literally kicked out of our bedroom, but Uncle Joe’s snoring made it impossible to sleep when he was in the room. We didn’t really mind, especially since after my parents closed their bedroom door for the evening, we’d all go into the kitchen and make him and us “Dagwood” sandwiches and he’d pour himself a big glass of Bushmills and then we’d go back into the living room and he’d tell us what he called “Traveling stories.” Uncle Joe made being a bum, riding the rails, and living in hobo camps seem like the greatest adventure ever.

He took us to the zoo on the bus (fares compliments of my mom, of course) and up to the Science Museum at Humboldt Park. It was only many years later that my mom explained to me why she loved it so much when Uncle Joe came to visit. “He would take you kids away for hours and your dad and I desperately needed some alone time—if you know what I mean.”

Many years later, after all of us were grown, she gathered us all together and made a formal apology for the poor parenting that she had subjected us to. But she ended the apology with, “But then again, just look at all of you—isn’t it quite remarkable what unskilled labor can produce?”

Uncle Joe let out an alarming-to-hear moan, and his ancient Irish, alcoholic eyes opened wide. I was alone in the hospital room with him. He reached up with a distended hand and seized my shirt at the collar and with shocking strength yanked me close! With a hoarse, raspy voice he said, “I’m going home, Danny. I’m going home.”

I didn’t know what to say, and he wouldn’t let go of my collar.

“I can see them! I can see them! I’m going home, Danny!”

“That’s good, Unc,” I said, trying to pull back a little, “what are you seeing—and where’s home?”

“Buffalo! Buffalo! I’m on a barge and we’re coming off the lake and going down the River. It’s getting dark and cold, but I can see the grain elevators. I can see them towering high in the shadows on the south shore. Danny, I see them as sure as salvation! I’m going home to Buffalo!”

“But Unc, you are already here in Buffalo—in a room at the Buffalo General.”

Then he released his grip on my collar, fell back, and closed his eyes. He let out a big, soft sigh and ever-so-gently took a final breath. The hospital monitor machine began to “ding” and “beep.” Two nurses rushed in, and, after a few frantic medical activities, one of the nurses turned to me and said that Uncle Joe was “gone.”

My dad and mom came running into the room. My dad just stared at him. My mom put her arms around me and hugged me tightly and cried.

At the time, I thought I was “working”. I realize now though that those days spent hauling those long, flashy, and insanely expensive boats about the southwestern desert from Los Angeles to Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico wasn’t work at all. No, I see now that it was therapy. And unlike most undergoing psychoanalysis, I was being paid—not the therapist.

The seemingly endless solitary hours, the countless saguaros and yuccas, the panorama of water-hungry wastelands, all served to unfetter my mind. The rumble-hum of the diesel engine, the stark light of the ascending sun and the punishing, relentless, high-arching meridian sun, were but perquisites and preludes to the comforting tranquility of a desert summer evening.

A few miles east of the Cali-Arizona border, at a Flying J Truck Stop, I rendezvoused with a customer. We unhitched his freshly serviced trailer and boat from my truck and re-hitched to his truck. After some paperwork, pleasantries and a sincere handshake, we went our separate ways. I then spent a sun-slammed day crossing the barren immensity of the Arizona desert bound for New Mexico. Driving for a living is analogous to writing for a living, inasmuch as the physical effort put forth from a day spent in front of a steering wheel or a keyboard seems quite minuscule, but at day’s end, one is exhausted—depleted. (I suspect that the brain, per minute, consumes more calories than the biceps or the quads.)

I was going to Elephant Butte Marina to pick up a boat and return to Los Angeles with it. Elephant Butte is a lake north of Las Cruces, near the little, uniquely named town of Truth or Consequences. In T or C I checked into a Motel 6. The sun was settling into a shadowy line of low, mauve-hued, cactus-strewn mountains. I was road weary, hungry, sandy-eyed and sleepy, and champing at the bit for a beer or two, a meal, and a bed.

I walked up the little road next to the motel and went beneath the archway that announced the entrance to La Cocina. Inside the restaurant, I ordered a Burrito Grande to go. I savored a bottle of cold beer during the ten minutes it took for my burrito to be ready. Once back in the motel parking lot, I retrieved my little ice chest from the truck and set myself down at a dusty metal table in a small alcove that adjoined the motel. (When one spends considerable time traversing the Mojave, a good ice chest becomes as indispensable as one’s own bones or blood.) I took out a wet, icy, golden bottle of Miller High Life and set it on the table beside my burrito.

Dumb as it may sound, that simple warm burrito and cold beer meal tasted like spicy Sinai manna and the heaven-sweet wine of Cana. Sitting there in the dark, fatigued, full, and buzzy of brain, I opted for one final beer before heading up to my room. A welcomed tender breeze disrupted the early evening stillness. I sat there sipping the beer and devouring the serenity and silence.

It didn’t last. They came around from the rear of the building. In the gloaming they failed to notice me at first. A couple were about to set themselves down at a table when they saw me. Even in the shadowy darkness I could see they were desert dwellers. Disheveled and dust-crusted. Decades ago, we’d have called them “hippies.” They had shabby bedrolls and were there to sleep on the patio no doubt. I nodded to them, finished my beer, and got to my feet.

“Where are you going?” the girl asked. Her voice was raspy, hoarse even.

“To my room. I’m exhausted. I’ve been driving all day,” I said, and then wondered to myself why I felt it necessary to explain myself to her.

I waited for the inevitable request inquiring whether I could spare a few dollars. Instead the guy came over and stood directly in my way. I didn’t see a knife or gun, so I wasn’t exactly in fear of my life. I felt my right knee twitch. It was ready to bury itself deep in this hippie’s groin.

“Can I give you something to read?” he asked meekly. “Maybe if you are too tired to read it tonight, you can look at it in the morning.”

As he spoke he reached into his pants pocket. My knee was ready to launch. The hippie produced a little paper booklet from his pocket and held it out for me to take. I took it from him.

“Read it please,” the girl with the hoarse voice said from behind the guy, “This little booklet changed my life, saved me. I don’t even use meth anymore, haven’t now for over a year—ask Marvin, if you don’t believe me.”

I looked around the guy to the girl who was now sitting at a table. In the darkness, I couldn’t make her out too well. I set my little ice chest back down on the concrete. “I have beer and soda pop in here. Want some?”

“We’ll take sodas please,” the girl said, “That’s very kind of you, sir.” I handed them a couple of Pepsi Colas and said, “Take care you two,” and went on up to my room feeling somewhat guilty for misjudging their intentions, and glad as hell that I didn’t knee the poor guy in the nuts.

I was up before five, showered, and put on my day-two underwear, socks and shirt, and went down and checked out. In the parking lot, I fired up the truck and sat there in the cool pre-dawn darkness letting the motor come up to temperature. The sun had yet to begin its oranging-up of the eastern horizon. I had slept well.

“Hope you had a good night’s sleep,” the newly familiar raspy voice intoned. The girl from last night was standing on her tiptoes looking up at me in the cab. “Did you read it?”

I hadn’t. I was so tired last night I had gone right to sleep. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled it out and looked at it for the first time. “Do You Know Where You Are Going After You Die?” was emblazoned in bright red letters on the flimsy, dirt-soiled, paper cover.

She just stood there staring up at me. Last night, I thought she was just a kid, but now I discerned that she was a grown woman. The guy, Marvin, stood in silence behind her. His hands were clasped and his head was slightly bowed and his eyes were cast down at the desiccated dirt. I looked back at the woman. She smiled beatifically at me.

“You’re very nice people you two, and thanks, but I already know where I’m going after I die,” I told her.

“Oh thank you blessed Jesus. I told Marvin last night that I had a feeling you were already a man of God. I just knew that you had been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. I just knew it.”

“Well, I’m sorry my dear, but I’m not really ‘a man of God’ as you put it, but I’ve known for many years now where I’m going after I die.”

She put a hand to her mouth and just stared at me. I swear I saw tears suddenly appear and glisten in her sad dark eyes.

“You’re nice. You’re a good soul,” she said. “I know these things. I’ve been blessed by The Holy Spirit and been given the power to know goodness when it stands before me. I also recognize evil. I feel your goodness. It shines out of you and into me like a bright light. We want you to believe so you can be saved. We need you to be saved. You need you to be saved. We want you to be in Heaven with us.”

I looked at her. What a wonderful person, tortured and misguided perhaps, but few, at least in my eyes, could stand much higher than this strange, sad, caring woman and her quiet, prayerful companion.

I waved a friendly good-bye to the odd, sweet couple, put the truck in gear and idled across the parking lot to the road. In the mirror, I saw her just staring out toward me while he stood behind her, head bowed and hands clasped in front of him.

As I headed up the road to Elephant Butte, I looked over at my passenger seat and there sat my long-dead Uncle Joe. On his lap rested his old King James Bible and in his raised and spread-wide hands he held up the Sierra County Sentinel Newspaper. He just shook his old white-haired head and mused, “Not much happening in these little desert towns. Are we heading for Buffalo now?”

“Not yet, Unc,” I told him, “not yet, but soon.”

*

Dan Delehant has spent many hours driving a truck over the mostly lonely highways and roads of the American Southwest. Dan’s stories have appeared in Dear Booze Magazine, Wild, Weird, Wonderful 25th Anniversary Anthology, Twisted Endings Magazine, Liquid Imagination Magazine, and others. Dan and his wife Dora live in Temescal Canyon, Southern California.