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September, 2005
Dad, the Mighty Androscoggin, and a One-Armed Good Samaritan
By Peggy Dwyer
It’s Friday. Because I’m an idiot, I let myself get caught up in a project at work, and before I know it, its 6:30. Shit! I scoot out of the building and while I’m running to the car, I remember that I had actually told Dad (and written it down in his daily notes) that I might be late tonight, and that if he got hungry and went ahead and nuked himself a Hungry Man before I got home, my feelings wouldn’t be hurt. I stop running. Good. I hate running. Feels like I’ve been running a lot since Dad’s visit turned serious a month ago. Mom died of Alzheimer’s disease in January, and he’s been lonely and sad and useless down home since. He’s 82, with the same diagnosis. I slow to a brisk trot. At the car, I realize that I left my cell phone in my office. I consider going back for it, but don’t because I really need to get home pronto. I do stop at Irving, since the fuel gauge doesn’t care what Dad’s up to. That was a good thing, because while the pump was chugging down my hard earned pay, I also remember that I had called in a prescription for him and he’d be out before the long weekend was over, if I didn’t go get it tonight. I pull into Rite Aid, and it takes FOREVER for the kid behind the counter to find my package and ring up the sale. I mean, a ridiculously long time.
It’s nearly 8:00 by the time I get home. The vacuum cleaner cord winds all the way from the mudroom to the living room, but there’s no Dad on the end. That’s odd. He likes to vacuum. That’s odd too. I call for him, and he’s right there in the bathroom, and says he’ll be out in a minute. I peek in the freezer. The Hungry Man’s still there. I get cracking on a new specialty of mine- a lovely little entrée- hot dogs and beans, sauerkraut and a pickle. Even taking the time to butter and grill the buns to golden perfection, it’s on the table in under 5. I holler to Dad that supper’s ready, and he says that he’s washing his hands and will be right out. It crosses my mind that I wish he wouldn’t tell me what he’s doing in there, but I let it slide. I crack a beer, take a deep swig, and breathe. What a friggin’ day! Thank GOD it’s Friday- I’m so glad about the three-day weekend that I don’t even care that it’ll probably rain right through it. I just want to kick back and not rush for a while.
Where’s Dad? Hey Dad, are you OK in there? He kind of grunts, and the first flicker of real concern ignites. Aware of the irony, I say, what are you doing in there? He says, well, right now, I’m lying on the floor. I leap up and ask if I can come in. Quite cheerfully, he says sure. I open the door and am assaulted by the acrid stench of stale urine. He’s been in here a LONG time. He’s stretched out on the floor as much as one can be in my tiny bathroom, fully dressed. I notice that his pants are soaked, his jacket has hay on the back and shoulders, and he’s only got one sock on. He’s totally alert. Are you hurt? No, I’m not hurt- I just can’t get up. How long have you been here? He says not too long, but too long. The old guy is still funny. I help him stand. It was harder than I thought it would be. He probably weighs a buck sixty or so, and has zero flexibility, so just getting his knees over to the side and rolling him up onto his butt took some doing. I get him up, and the poor guy can’t WAIT to get out of that bathroom- but his legs are unusually weak, and his knees buckle a little at every step. We take a nerve-wracking hike from the bathroom to the kitchen, where he promptly sits down, wet pants and all, and eats every smidgen of his now cold dinner. I asked him maybe a dozen times, but he couldn’t tell me what made him fall down, or what he was doing before he fell- he kept changing the subject to the oranges he cut for the orioles today, the fact that the pond was drying up fast and we were going to have to fill the trough for the cows pretty soon, that the male hummingbirds were starting to show off for the females, that the big horse had gotten out of his pen, but went right back in when he chased him. Everything was normal, except for that bit about being on the floor and all, which he didn’t want to talk about. He points to the red canoe, which is now on the opposite side of the road from where I left it this morning, and said that a neighbor helped him move it so it wouldn’t take off in the flood. He said the guy got around pretty good, even though he had only one arm. He also said, several times, don’t get old, Peg.
I want to get him cleaned up, but Dad says he’s too tired for a shower. I believe him. Besides, neither one of us wants back in that bathroom. I help him to his room, and for the first time, I help him take his pants off, and his underwear off, and his lonely sock off. I give him my powder puff and some baby powder, and ask him to make sure he’s dry everywhere. I talk him onto wearing the new tight fitting boxers I bought for him last week, so he could use the new dri-pads I bought on the same traumatic shopping trip. He agrees on the third try, and I help him step into them and pull them up. I let him position the pad. This old man is tired. I help him over to the bed, and he flops back in a Nestea plunge that scared the shit out of me at the time. I thought about it some later and decided that’s probably how he gets into bed every night- he was quite nonchalant about the move, and it did get the job done in a hurry. Pulling the covers up, I notice a bloody abrasion on his knee, so I clean that up and put some antibiotic on it. He doesn’t know how it got there. He finished his bedtime routine- one set of eye drops, for allergies, then his nasal spray, and then the other set of drops, for glaucoma. He’s done. He says that I shouldn’t look him before 10 because he thinks he’d like to sleep late tomorrow, don’t get old, Peg one more time, and goodnight.
I come out clean up the bathroom, and go out to feed the horses. The garage is trashed. Hay everywhere, not a morsel of grain anywhere, everything that was up down and everything that was down trodden upon and muddy. Did I mention that it had been raining for the past 2 weeks? I put the knucklehead horse back in his stall, and notice that the door had a piece of string tied to it and wrapped around the hook in a totally ineffectual attempt to fortify the latch. I come in and, for the first time in my life, literally cry in my beer. I go to bed and finish the John Grisham book I’d been sleeping with for the two months. It was OK- the main character reminded me of my friend Nick- probably just because he started the book editing a tiny newspaper, and it actually took off.
I wake up to the puppy asking for out and look out the window- oh my God it’s actually sunny! I jump up, pull on my pants and trot downstairs. I let the puppy out, glower at Jack and the carnage in the garage, and go in to start coffee. I remember Dad.
I sneak back towards his room, and listen. I can’t open the door without making a racket because the doorknob’s busted and pops out on the opposite side every third use or so. I push the carton of Pepsi that’s blocking the kitty door to the side, get down on my knees and peek into the room. After quite a long time during which I develop elaborate scenarios about what I’d do if it weren’t so, I decide that the lump in the bed IS actually breathing, and I go back to the kitchen to finish the coffee project. I clean up both of last night’s dishes, and as soon as the coffee slowed down a little I poured a cup and took it outside. I turn so I can’t see the mess in the garage, sip coffee and marvel at the glorious day. Sunshine! Maybe I can get my vegetables planted today, after all. I go back to the kitty door. Same-same. Cool.
I go back outside, walk across the yard to see how many of my perennials the horse ate yesterday, and a truck pulls into the driveway. A one-armed guy gets out.
Mr. Skip Ridley introduces himself. We shake hand. He points to the canoe and says he hoped I didn’t mind that he moved it, but with the river coming up so fast he was afraid it’d float off. I said, not at all, and thank you for being so neighborly. I told him Dad had mentioned him, then I ask him the real reason he stopped by. Skip asks is he ok? Well, he’s not up yet, but he had a hard day yesterday. Skip said I know, and filled in quite a few blanks.
The day before, Skip is driving down the road, and he notices the canoes on what was the bank but is now a large eddy among the trees. He gets up to Rodgers’ house before he decides that he just has to turn around and tell someone. He comes to the house and finds dad vacuuming the kitchen. He asks if anyone else is home, and Dad says no, just me, but I’ll go get the boats. Skip says no, I’ll take care of it, and grabs a canoe paddle. He goes down over the bank, pulls the red canoe down to the water’s edge, and goes out to check the green canoe. It’s floating, but secure, so he turns back toward shore and sees Dad standing there with a canoe paddle in hand. Skip tells him the canoe is fine, and shoves the bow up onto shore to get out, but before he can move up to get out, Dad’s got one leg over the gunnel and is teetering on the bank. No, No, it’s fine! I’m coming in! No, I’m going out to get the boat! No it’s fine- it’s not going anywhere! Take me out there- I’ve got to get the boat and so on, the whole time Dad teetering with one foot on dry ground.
Skip says he was just like my Dad- absolutely wouldn’t take no for an answer- and I was so afraid he’d fall the way he was standing, I let him get into the boat to where he could sit down. They go out so Skip can show Dad that the boat is fine. Dad insists on trying to get it back to shore, but eventually concedes to the laws of physics-one upright canoe, one upturned canoe, two guys, three arms… I don’t imagine the flood stage, the absence of lifejackets or 42?* water temp factored into the concession at all. They head back to shore. Dad can’t get out of the boat. He falls down, in the boat, nearly tipping it. He falls down, half in the boat, nearly tipping it. Skip, acutely aware of the fact that he can’t swim, has all he can do to keep the boat upright and mostly on the bank while Dad struggles. Eventually, Dad falls down out of the boat, but with enough of himself on shore so he can let go of the boat. Skip gets out. The banks are greasy as pigshit. Skip says he had quite a time getting Dad to his feet, because he kept wanting to lie down in the mud. He said he had an even harder time helping him up that steep, wet, debris-strewn bank. Thinking how long it took me to get him from the bathroom to the kitchen, using both arms, I say I bet. I can’t imagine. Well, I can, but I really don’t want to.
When they finally got to the road, Skip flags down Bob Eames, another good soul who lives down the road, and together they get Dad back to the house. Dad insists that he’s he fine now, and that he’s going in for a shower and some lunch. Skip goes home to his own lunch and shower. That was noontime. I got home at 8. Skip says he didn’t sleep all night, worrying about Dad. He wishes he had come inside and looked for a phone number or something. I hug him thanks and invite him in for coffee.
So, now we’re sitting at the table, Skip telling me about how much my Dad reminded him of his own Dad, who lived with him until they couldn’t handle it anymore. He wished they could have kept him at home, but the guy was so stubborn, independent, unwilling to admit that there was anything that he did once that maybe he shouldn’t do now that they were terrified to think of which way he was going to get himself killed, so they put him in a nursing home where he died of pneumonia a short time after.
I ask him how he lost his arm. Hitchhiking in Connecticut 20 years ago. Hit and run, drunk driver. Stove him all up inside and broke his neck and the nerves serving his arm. An off duty ambulance saw it happen, stopped and gave him O 02, which they say saved his life. He was in a coma for 3 weeks and has no recollection of the accident at all- if it weren’t for the empty sleeve, he’d have no proof that it happened at all. An off- duty cop also saw the whole thing, and chased down and arrested the driver. The guy turned out to be working when he hit skip, so Skip was able to sue and collect from the employer’s company, enough to keep him going. That, plus the disability and Medicaid, and he’s doing OK, by Maine standards. A month’s worth of Vicodin only costs $20, but a month’s worth of medicine for his pancreas costs $400- so the medical priority is treating for pain. Most unfortunately, he can’t drink anymore.
He loves fishing and camping, spent a lot of time up around Nesoudanahunk and Baxter over the years. His dad taught him to fly-fish when he was 10. The first time he tried to fish after his accident, he was up at Big Eddy and hooked a trout. Now what? He started running up the bank, got to the end of where he could run with line and fish still in the water, and a couple of old ladies came running over and helped him land a 17” trout. Since then, he’s gotten an automatic reel and pretty good at stripping out line with his teeth. He’s never fished the Androscoggin. I promise to take him out when Jim gets home. We also talk about rafting- turns out he’s never done that, either. Always wanted to, but didn’t think he could. I promise to take him down the Kennebec. It’ll have to be after I line up some help with Dad- he can’t be left alone anymore, and I’ll be the one taking care of him- at least as long as he knows who I am and where he is. He won’t be going on any more adventures without me.
Don’t get old.
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